I always knew I was gonna be an artist. I was very confident in that.
Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It's a black wall. It's a thief.
Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.
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.
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
Motivation has always been a fascinating factor when considering a touring artist, especially when the years stack up. What keeps one out there year after year?
The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy.
I mean, I'm an artist by nature; no one considers what I do and no one knows who the heck I am, but that anybody does - it is astonishing.
I find as an artist if I'm not expressed relatively consistently, I get really depressed.
From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.
I just think that Jack White is the consummate artist - an artist's artist. I'm a huge fan.
Works of art produced in the contemporary world are a further expression of that. But I don't think there is an active, ongoing nihilist self-consciousness in the artist.
Because it's difficult to have a career as an artist, and in every situation where it's difficult to have a career, it's even harder for women, for all the other reasons that it's harder in other fiercely contested fields.
Record contracts are just like - I'm gonna say the word - slavery. I would tell any young artist... don't sign.
I see hip-hop as going in a self-managing place. It's very culturally controlled and artist-controlled. It's not really based on a label anymore. Everything is pretty much in the control of the artist. Which is amazing.
Marvin Gaye was one of the coolest. I look to him as a style icon and as an artist.
I was an underground artist, but the underground status was successful. Coming from where I came from to see where rap is now, now artists are selling from a million to eight million copies.
The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.
Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.
My favourite thing to do as an artist is record. It's a super therapeutic thing for me. Not to sound corny, but it literally is a stress relief for me.
