I started playing guitar and writing songs when I was 15. I think what mainly sparked my interest was just the fact that I grew up listening to Cheryl King, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor, and was just always inspired by that sort of organic art, an...
Each one seems to be, in some way, essentially different from the others, and each is a surprise to me. I think that making books, or any kind of art, might also be like mining. The artist digs into his or her life and imagination and never knows wha...
From the moment I got to Hollywood, I've always felt like I never really got to do what I wanted to do. In general, artists feel that you're never really allowed to accomplish what you would like to accomplish because there's just so much of this sys...
I remember I heard it in an interview with Michael Jackson one day, saying the art is gone, everybody makes records just to make a record. See, I always want the artist that try to build a whole body of music on one album, so you can enjoy it. So you...
Jazz music and, more specifically, jazz musicians, are my artistic heroes. I want to be the Thelonious Monk of acting. He had no concern for how well he was received. He played whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He just wasn't interested in achie...
The No. 1 quote critics give me is, 'Thom, your work is irrelevant.' Now, that's a fascinating, fascinating comment. Yes, irrelevant to the little subculture, this microculture, of modern art. But here's the point: My art is relevant because it's rel...
Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.
A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to appl...
In the past an artist produced things that were necessary socially; they were instruments, albeit of a special kind, that helped the dead reach eternity, spells to be cast, prayers to be liturgically fleshed. . . . The aesthetic component of those in...
Jacksonville has more creativity in its soup kitchens than any other community with an abundance of starving artists. I once sculpted a stale baguette into the shape of Stalin, and the art community was torn between the desire to admire my work, and ...
Just as writing can become calligraphy when it’s creatively, skillfully, and consciously performed, so can all other activities become art. In this case, we are reflecting upon life itself as an artistic statement—the art of living.
We didn't have sense enough to take care of it. Now it's torn. And the artist is dead.
If what any artist has to say is fundamentally human and profound the public will ultimately take his work unto itself. But if his own conceptions are limited and narrow in their human meaning it seems likely that time will erase his work.
I saw a painting once where the artist had actually done that--signed his work in blood. ... When I saw that, I thought it was as if the man who had painted the picture wanted to say to me, Well, you did ask what this actually cost.
As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see.
In effect, painting is the still memory of [the artist's] human motion, and our individual responses to it depend on who we are, on our character, which underlines the simple truth that no person leaves himself behind in order to look at a painting.
Birdy never felt artistic inclination when armed with a marking implement. What came to her were words, always words, commentary and criticism and correction and simple vocabulary curios; she scratched a few of them on the smooth red wall.
I hope the artist who illustrates this work will take care to do justice to his portrait. Mr. Clive himself, let that painter be assured, will not be too well pleased if his countenance and figure do not receive proper attention.
If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythological lore, our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged role.
Celeste." Jack grinned. "How every appropriate. An angel sent from heaven to relieve my boredom." "An artist sent from France to paint your brother's estate," she retorted. "Touché'. In that case we should get down to business.
Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of ...
