I trained as an artist originally, so I know what a nice human body looks like, and I would like to look like that notion, and of course I never will. But I've got past that.
The workman in the true sense of the word - the artist in guns - is either extinct, or hidden in an obscure corner. There is no individuality about modern guns. One is exactly like another.
I always felt, as a listener at a show, that when there was too much banter between the artist and the audience that it detracted from the show. I more enjoyed shows where the guys came out and they just played.
My songs are the reflection of how I think and how I feel in that moment. But I'm conscious of the fact that artists have a responsibility before the masses and they have to take care with their words.
I know as a child, I was really interested in becoming a manga artist, to create my own stories and illustrate them and present something that people would be interested in reading and looking at as well.
I am the eye that beholds... And I am the dreamer that paints the stars in the night sky... For I am the one they call artist, and you call Love.
I've met a lot of artists who wanted to paint me. LeRoy Neiman was one. He did it from a photograph. He made 20,000 copies, and we sold them all.
We are never more creative than when we are at odds with the world and there is nothing so artistically destructive as comfort. Princess Leia taught me that.
It must be said that it is challenging to balance uncompromising artistic integrity with commercial requirements, but I've also come to learn that couture clients are adventurous and particularly unpredictable in their taste.
The desk thing is a problem for me. The ideal one would be vast and perfectly clear. Yet the bane of the biographical existence is paper; if you're 'an artist under oath' you're writing from a mountain of documentation.
I played a heap of snow in a school play. I was under a sheet, and crawled out when spring came. I often say I'll never reach the same artistic level again.
When I've worked with established artists, I've naturally been more restricted, but you still have to take risks and push yourself to do something different.
Anything that exists on the human palette is, from my point of view, fair game for artists to portray. You don't have to go see it if you don't want to, so don't go.
Awakening your spiritual side is really what artists do. When you hit a groove, it's not you; it's the spirit world.
I think, as an artist, part of your job is being aware of what's going on around you and not selling out and not following the trend, which I'm totally against.
Overall my race hasn't been a problem. I'm a Black artist with White skin. At the end of the day you have to sing what's in your own soul.
Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness, and your black presence.
I'm six foot four and a half and I have a temper. It's reserved for very important issues. If someone is asking me to make an artistic concession, then I'll become a madman.
I've sort of decided that I can settle for being just the artist, arranger, writer and part-time engineer. That seems like enough to do.
People weren't even aware that I wrote my own songs. The media just promoted me as a female body. It's like I've had to prove that I'm an artist.
No production of high ideological and artistic value can evolve out of a creative group whose members are not united ideologically and in which discipline and order have not been established.
