There are a lot of artists in Gowanus, and certain things come into your visual vocabulary from living there - the scale of the subway and the canal, sometimes it almost looks like a de Chirico painting, with the intense angles of the shadows and eve...
I think Chicago people are very special people, and the Midwest's confluence of East Coast-meets-Midwest sensibilities had to, on a formative level, inform me as an artist and an actor. In that sense, it had to have helped me.
I'm an artist who works with pictures and words. Sometimes that stuff ends up in different kinds of sites and contexts which determine what it means and looks like.
The trouble with being a ghostwriter or artist is that you must remain rather anonymously without credit. If one wants the credit, one has to cease being a ghost and become a leader or innovator.
I guess I feel like it's a gift to meet those talented artists like George Lucas and Oliver Stone, Spike Lee and Richard Kelly. Even if it's a small role, it's a gift to be working that closely with them.
Communion was born out of shared frustration in 2006. We felt that although the likes of MySpace and YouTube opened up the playing field for songwriters online, people's discovery of these new artists was only skin deep.
I like rap. I like anything with soul. I like anything you can feel, anything that makes you think that the artist had to make that song, or they were going to go crazy.
They say your childhood influences your tastes and interests, or your approach if you're an artist. So what you create, whatever you saw, whatever your childhood was like - it influences how you're going to end up.
The thing that got me started on Twitter was just basically pressure from management and the record company saying, 'Hey, this is what all the other artists are doing. You need to be doing it also.' I didn't really have a clue what is was.
But in the old days, visual artists used to fall into two distinct categories: those of us who created images with cameras and those of us who applied stuff onto other stuff, with brushes or other tools.
I only get involved with roles that I find intriguing, in top quality productions regardless of the medium. I try not to focus on the format itself and concentrate instead, on finding roles that challenge and entertain me as an artist.
I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write.
Country radio certainly widens the boundaries of what I can do. Other artists may do something more edgy that gets on radio and that opens the door for me to be more edgy, I think.
I wanted to be the perfect artist. I'd do three hours of media interviews a day, going to every radio station I could squeeze in. I'd sign autographs after the show until everybody left.
It's very difficult for me to dislike an artist. No matter what he's creating, the fact that he's experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we're in a brotherhood of some kind... we're in it together.
I think most paintings are a record of the decisions that the artist made. I just perhaps make them a little clearer than some people have.
If the bottom dropped out of the market and the artist was not going to sell anything, he or she will keep working, and the dealer will keep trying to find some way to convince somebody to buy this stuff.
Some of my favorite artists are Jason Mraz, Eric Hutchinson, Ben Folds, Bruno Mars, Mumford and Sons, Maroon 5 - their vibe is slightly different from all the pop stuff on 'Glee,' although some do fall into that genre.
I think if you're artistic in any way, you're probably born with it. I guess it's a talent that can be learned here and there, but I think the instinct to tell a story or to create something happens maybe in the womb.
For me, acting is all about the aesthetic. I just want to keep honing my craft. Not that I'm taking myself too seriously, but every artist should consider himself Picasso. Otherwise, you're doing yourself an injustice.
In school, I learned about artists and how they were free to express themselves. I was allergic to conformity, and the lifestyle attracted me. I wanted to express myself in a way that slammed people up against the wall.
