Artist Quotes - Page 233

I had tried to come up with a superhero comic, but it didn't work 'cause I wasn't a superhero artist, and I left it unfinished.

Producers don't really have any authority because you are paid by the artist, and if they choose to ignore you, they can. Your power only hangs by the tiniest thread. If you pull it too hard it will snap.

Having a mood disorder is not synonymous with having artistic talent, but it is true that people in the so-called creative professions-writers, actors, artists, musicians-have a higher than normal incidence of such illnesses, and there are also a disproportionate number of alcoholics in these fields whose drinking may be an attempt to medicate the anxiety of depression.

For a while, I was nervous about portraying women because of the objectification that automatically comes with it, whether the artist intends or not. With "Of Another Kind," I've not so much drawn nudes - I hate saying "nudes" because it's not a spectacle - but portrayed people naked. I see them in a more straightforward way - exposed, but with no indication of who or what they are; they're just there.

Kerry James Marshall especially was a huge influence on me in graduate school, as were Wangechi Mutu and Julie Mehretu. These artists are titans. My education was also very much in comic books, so I've been going to comic book events in New York and have met a few artists there.

I've always felt the portrait is an occasion for marks to happen. I've never viewed the portrait as about the sitter. Even when I go to the National Portrait Gallery, I'm not thinking about the sitter; I'm thinking about how the artist chose that color or that highlight. It becomes about the time, place, and context.

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 hadn't known anything else, other than being an artist, and I needed to be a person for a while, really get to know myself without that whole thing [of selling music] surrounding me.

I consider being a performer work. I come from a theater family; I've been an actor all my life. I started acting when I was a kid, and I've earned a living as an artist all my life. It's my job in the sense that it's everything I am, the only thing I know how to do. I literally do not have qualifications to do anything else on this planet. Seriously, it's scary. [But] I don't consider it a job [because] it's my religion - it's my faith, it's my family, it's everything to me.

People assume that all artists make for terrible business people, but I'm in complete charge of my own career.

Any respectable artist has really given up on a label because the labels are still kidding themselves that the only way to go is to sign these big names like Lady Gaga and expect to make gazillions.

I'm a well rounded artist and I love to make music and create and be different. Hopefully I get the opportunity to show the world that.

With the way music is going right now, it's difficult for an r&b singer to make real music. If it's not with a trap beat and you're not mumbling, no disrespect to all of the great artists out there doing what they're doing, I'm not hating, I'm just saying it's difficult for r&b singers right now to make quality music.

I think that the whole experience of living, breathing, thinking, and being lost in wonderment is, for me, that of being an artist. And the idea of identifying as someone who is just living and existing and making objects or paintings-somehow I moved away from that years and years ago.

For me, if the music is good, whether the artist is famous or unknown, I love being part of the music and contributing what I can to the bass end.

I'm not an experimental artist. I have no talent for that. I need a certain kind of antecedent form to follow.

In a sense, I feel like the job of the artist at all times is essentially the same, which is simply to tell the truth. I mean, I'm nervous about any prescriptions for what a writer should or shouldn't do.

I was a 10 million-plus selling artist.

I look at other artists who have had fabulous first albums, and you don't know what they're doing today. Who's to say I'll be an exception to that rule?

I think that once an artist has proven herself and you sell lots of records, you should be compensated.

I feel like I have the greatest life an artist could dream of.

You need to know what makes artists tick. Having been through the process myself as a musician, since I was an early teen, gave me an advantage - understanding them from their point of view, because it's about them, it's not about you - it's their vision and what they're capable of achieving, and you're the conduit.

I think almost every woman artist I've ever met has this ideal of being in a partnership working situation with a man, that men don't seem to share. They seem to want this ideal thing, that we'll always be together and work together.

It used to be that youd have a song recorded by a major country artist and if it was a hit, you could buy a car. Now you can buy a dealership.

Nowadays, an artist is someone who makes art mean the things he does.