I think that fashion and music go hand-in-hand, and they always should. It's the artist's job to create imagery that matches the music. I think they're very intertwined.
I'm an old guy, and I was protesting during the Vietnam War. We killed fifty Asians for every loyal American. Every artist worth a damn in this country was terribly opposed to that war, finally, when it became evident what a fiasco and meaningless butchery it was. We formed sort of a laser beam of protest. Every painter, every writer, every stand-up comedian, every composer, every novelist, every poet aimed in the same direction. Afterwards, the power of this incredible new weapon dissipated.
Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.
I think people like to see the lives of artists that are legends. They always go through the dark periods and I think just as humans we like to see that and them coming out of it. I love those kinds of movies.
Especially as an artist who has been signed to one of the majors throughout my last ten years, you don't always get to write your own music.
The difference between EAZY E the artist and Eric Wright the human being, was two separate worlds apart. Behind closed doors, Eazy-E was a real generous giver, A true philanthropist.In 1991, I remember when Eazy-E drove out to Fontana California to drop off $20,000 cash because my twin boys were having hernia problems & and slight medical issues because of being born premature. He stopped his meeting & drove to give me the cash for my twins operations.
Prior to my father's death, I was having a hard time committing to a career as an artist, but that's not because of who he was - it was because of who I am. It's true, though, that I felt I shouldn't compete with him, and that those feelings went away after he died.
I have a quiet and an artistic side that many people don't know of.
Conventional wisdom can get us into so much trouble, especially as artists.
Before, I was more concerned with getting on the radio, like many young artists.
I realized that I wanted to get better in every way. As a person, as a friend, as a songwriter, as a musician, as an artist, record producer, you name it.
I love light in my work but I was never influenced by neon signage in itself, rather its effect on nature and architecture. You can't ignore what's around you, but at the same time, an artist who has a sophisticated form language knows how to pull in different elements, and readjust and redirect those. . . . So it becomes an engineering process, too.
I am not Lyme disease, that's not who I am, I'm still a feminist artist, but this is a part of my story too, and I'm not going to keep it out to look cooler.
When did the word 'temperament' come into fashion with us? Perhaps it came in when we discovered that artists were human beings.
So few hip-hop artists have ever advanced. Their songs on their seventh, eighth albums sound exactly like the songs on their first album. More than an artist, I'm a real person-and real people grow. And I wanna just sing my growth.
People say if you keep making work and keep putting it out, better things will come. I think artists should never forget that. I think that's what you have to be committed to if you're an artist, that's where the good feelings come from. It's so easy to get caught up in other stuff, like the business part of it. If you just have to be aware, just keep putting it out there.
Different people have different ways of doing things. For me, becoming a songwriter first and falling in love with the Nashville songwriting community and the process of songs and getting better and putting more in what I wanted to say, was absolutely vital in me even wanting to be an artist.
I just want to be the biggest artist that I can be, and I want to make a difference. I feel like Michael (Jackson) made a difference with everything that he did. He was so charitable and just always on-point. I just want to be where he is, as an artist.
In a way, artists are shamans, facilitators who take what's there, channel it through themselves, then put it out there for people to appreciate.
In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well stocked fish pond... If we don't give some attention to upkeep, our well is apt to become depleted, stagnant, or blocked... As artists, we must learn to be self nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them - to re-stock the trout pond, so to speak.
Nowadays, when kids decide they like an artist, they'll absorb everything that artist has ever done in a single night.
I love artists making cool music, regardless of the style.So, if a country artist making really cool music came along and asked me to work with them, I just might say yes, even though I'm not super-knowledgeable about country, like I am about hip-hop. I might do that because the idea is so interesting.
The artist in his calling of interpreter creates because he must. He is so much of a voice that, for him, silence is like death
If you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them....You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted.... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules.
Both the artist and the lover know that perfection is not loveable. It is the clumsiness of a fault that makes a person lovable.