Artist Quotes
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I was working within a figurative representational framework, and there was a sense of reading the painting as a transparency, or truth, or autobiography, which I think is partially the burden of artists of color - or women, or anybody who is representing a so-called minority position. Are you actually telling a true story, or your own story? You don't just get to tell a story. The readings of the work didn't necessarily conform to my own understanding of mythology, where violence and eroticism and the body and all of these different forms coexist all the time.
Chitra Ganesh
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It's not that you don't make any money doing conscious rap music. You make a lot of money doing this, but if you're greedy and you're not satisfied with $500,000 a year, and you want $2 million a year, then you will suffer as a conscious rap artist.
Lawrence "Kris" Parker
Boogie Down Productions
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It's much harder, much more work to be your own artist, and it's hard for me to just want to do one thing. I love doing my own music, but I really have to get into a groove with it, which has been difficult over the last few years because I've had so much great work coming in.
Gail Ann Dorsey
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We were all born, and we all came to the music business with everything we had. Some of us just don't get a chance. Now there's a lot of other people like myself, indeed, who are getting heard worldwide. That gives other artists a chance.
Erykah Badu
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I wanted to be an artist. I was studying art. I wanted to be a great painter. When I went into the Navy, there wasn't much to draw at sea. So I began writing, and I began reading a lot.
Ed McBain
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I have an artist background and I got into the field because I heard things in my own head that weren't happening and I wanted to have the control. So I learned to record and mix and do all those things. I found it as a means to an end, and I was fascinated by sound and creating sound. I very quickly became addicted to understanding everything there was to know.
Emily Lazar
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I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.
Sherman Alexie
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I think every artist subconsciously wants to evolve themselves. Sometimes they get stuck in ruts because of pop culture, peer pressure, stuff like that. But what excites me most is exploring my own musical insights and expanding upon them.
Steven Siro Vai
Alcatrazz
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I think being an artist, or just being creative, or imaginative, or aware, where I think everybody starts out, and by about the age of 10, that's been pretty effectively whipped out by education.
William T. Wiley
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Your greatest creation is your creative life. It's all in your hands. Rejection can't take it away; reviews can't take it away. The life you create for yourself as an artist, may be the only thing that's really yours. Create a life you can center yourself in calmly as you wait for your work to grow.
Sara Zarr
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The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.
George Sand
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I was a very introverted individual and this became an important outlet for me to express myself, to communicate, to take positions, make statements, take a stand and so forth. But I never really thought I had much a future at all So the thing that I had to do was to really go inward and really work super hard in the hope that someday it would pay off. And in using that term I don't mean necessarily money, but just the fact that I would have more depth and dimension both as a human being and as an artist.
Ed Paschke
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Among the Indians, as among other nations, some people are born artists, but most are not. I am a born artist. I have as much interest in my people as any anthropologist, and I have studied our culture and lore. My aim is to reassemble the pieces of a once proud culture, and to show the dignity and bravery of my people.
Norval Morrisseau
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There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.
Erica Jong
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Any great warrior is also a scholar, and a poet, and an artist.
Steven Seagal
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I'm a professional artist, that's how I make my living. So I watch the market. There is, it seems to me, a lot of pure financial speculation, and I don't think that's terribly healthy. Though as long as the money is getting back to the artist, I think that's good. I'm very happy younger artists can make money faster than we could. And we were making it faster than a generation before us.
Brice Marden
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Everyone knows French artist Claude Monet's "Water Lilies," which he painted in his garden. You find the images everywhere from galleries to dorm rooms and dentists' lounges.
Ari Shapiro
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Make your life your art. It doesn't have to be that you're an artist. I know I talk about art a lot, but I mean a very broad thing with that. You could be a veterinarian, that's your art. Find your art; find your thing you love.
Gerard Way
My Chemical Romance
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In general, and most especially with artists, I pay as much attention to the man who does the work, as to the work itself.
Vincent Van Gogh
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I'm always looking for ways to develop as an artist, especially as a jazz artist-to find different ways of testing my voice.
Cassandra Wilson
