Working Artists Quotes & Sayings

I must not undervalue my work simply because I enjoy it. A working artist understands his worth and lives by it. — Mary Robinette Kowal

If Kubrick had lived to see the opening of his final film, he obviously would have been disappointed by the hostile reactions. But I'm sure that in the end he would have taken it with a grain of salt and moved on. That's the lot of all true visionaries, who don't see the use of working in the same vein as everyone else. Artists like Kubrick have minds expansive and dynamic enough to picture the world in motion, to comprehend not just where its been, but where it's going. — Martin Scorsese

I'm truly blessed to be doing what I've always wanted - CREATE. I have found a freedom that is hard to put into words. I always wondered about my projects - which artists are working on what, and which directions should I take? I don't even think of those things now. I passionately go into my studio and ask myself, what would I like to create today? — Steve Kaufman

I don't know if there are artists out there who love their own records. I haven't met any, and I'm kind of extreme in the other direction, but therein lies the impetus to keep working and keep making new songs and new records. — Ani DiFranco

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen. — Tom Stoppard

I get a lot of 'Oh, you've been gone.' I wasn't gone. Just because you didn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't working and collecting checks. I just wasn't singing and doing videos. I do a lot of other things, like I said, like writing scripts and stuff like that. I write for other artists. — Tionne Watkins

Basically everything I've done in art, I was in possession of when I was 20 years old. I use a waste retrieval method of working. I'll go back and use something that disgusted me 15 years ago but that I had enough sense to think about. Some artists change dramatically. I see my work more like history being written. — Edward Ruscha

I like working closely with artists. I think that's very important in fantasy and science fiction - the visual aspect of the worlds and the characters. — Margaret Weis

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career. — Madeleine L'Engle

Christ alone, of all the philosophers, magicians, etc., has affirmed eternal life as the most important certainty, the infinity of time, the futility of death, the necessity and purpose of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor books. He maintained in no uncertain terms that he made ... living men, immortals. — Vincent Van Gogh

Looking at and 'appreciating' art has been understood as an instrument (or at best a result) of upward mobility, in which owning art is the ultimate step. making art is at the bottom of the scale. This is the only legitimate reason to see artists as so many artists see themselves - as 'workers'. At the same time, artists/makers tend to feel misunderstood and, as creators, innately superior to the buyers/owners. The innermost circle of the art-world class system thereby replaces the rulers with the creators, and the contemporary artist in the big city is a schizophrenic creature. S/he is persistently working 'up' to be accepted, not only by other artists, but also by the hierarchy that exhibits, writes about and buys his / her work. At the same time s/he is often ideologically working 'down' in an attempt to identify with the workers outside of the art context and to overthrow the rulers in the name of art. — Ben Davis

I guess I feel like it's a gift to meet those talented artists like George Lucas and Oliver Stone, Spike Lee and Richard Kelly. Even if it's a small role, it's a gift to be working that closely with them. — Bai Ling

There's artists that I'm working with on a new label of mine. Foxy Nova and Supa Nova. — Kenneth Edmonds

Directing is one of my favourite things to do because I love telling stories and I love working with the individual artists and it's something that I really missed. — John Lasseter

I'm just working with ideas in my head and with drawings that the artists did. And suddenly to see these things come to life in movies - it's just wonderful. — Stan Lee

Working with the morning pages, we begin to sort through the differences between our real feelings, which are often secret, and our official feelings, those on the record for public display. — Julia Cameron

I always saw myself as a singer-songwriter, a solo-artist, that's why working with other artists was never satisfying for me. — John Legend

Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show. — Lady Gaga

For some young artists, it can take a bit of time to discover which tools (which medium, or genre, or career pathway) will truly suit them best. For me, although many different art forms attract me, the tools that I find most natural and comfortable are language and oil paint; I've also learned that as someone with a limited number of spoons it's best to keep my toolbox clean and simple. My husband, by contrast, thrives with a toolbox absolutely crowded to bursting, working with language, voice, musical instruments, puppets, masks animated on a theater stage, computer and video imagery, and half a dozen other things besides, no one of these tools more important than the others, and all somehow working together. For other artists, the tools at hand might be needles and thread; or a jeweller's torch; or a rack of cooking spices; or the time to shape a young child's day ...
To me, it's all art, inside the studio and out. At least it is if we approach our lives that way. — Terri Windling

Spoke of the professional men and the artists as villeins. What else are they? One and all, the professors, the preachers, and the editors, hold their jobs by serving the Plutocracy, and their service consists of propagating only such ideas as are either harmless to or commendatory of the Plutocracy. Whenever they propagate ideas that menace the Plutocracy, they lose their jobs, in which case, if they have not provided for the rainy day, they descend into the proletariat and either perish or become working-class agitators. And don't forget that it is the press, the pulpit, and the university that mould public opinion, set the thought-pace of the nation. As for the artists, they merely pander to the little less than ignoble tastes of the Plutocracy. But — Jack London

I was really into communal living and we were all /
such free spirits, crossing the country we were /
nomads and artists and no one ever stopped / to think about how the one working class housemate / was whoring to support a gang of upper middle class / deadheads with trust fund safety nets and connecticut / childhoods, everyone was too busy processing their isms / to deal with non-issues like class ... and it's just so cool / how none of them have hang-ups about / sex work they're all real / open-minded real / revolutionary you know / the legal definition of pimp is / one who lives off the earnings of / a prostitute, one or five or / eight and i'd love to stay and / eat some of the stir fry i've been cooking / for y'all but i've got to go fuck / this guy so we can all get stoned and / go for smoothies tomorrow, save me / some rice, ok? — Michelle Tea

My career has been wacky and not at all normal. I've never had a manager, nobody gets jobs for me. I wind up working with artists that I meet. — Nile Rodgers

Artists working for other artists is all about knowing, learning, unlearning, initiating long-term artistic dialogues, making connections, creating covens, and getting temporary shelter from the storm. — Jerry Saltz

Footballers can be like artists when the mind and body are working as one. It is what Miles Davis does when he plays free jazz - everything pulls together into one intense moment that is beautiful. — Lilian Thuram

I moved to San Francisco to work at Apple's Cupertino office in the summer of 2006, then stayed on remotely in a part-time job back in Austin. It was an internship with iTunes. I helped them launch new features as well as new marketing programs. I also helped program the iTunes Store every week, working on which artists and albums got featured. — Brit Morin

I know a bit about his [Sirk] life, but it's more about his style than biography. He was European and came out of a theater background, and could easily be defined as 'Brechtian.' He was expressionistic in his films, and was an example of those intensely intellectual artists who ended up working for American studios, and was handed the Ladies Home Journal and asked to adapt the stories for the screen. He found ways to use his artistry to make them interesting and nuanced, while critiquing American values in the process. — Todd Haynes

Working with some of the best makeup artists has taught me a lot of amazing tricks to making me feel more confident, and I can't wait to share them with you guys. — Kylie Jenner

Artists are not helper monkeys; they're not in it to visualize 'your' story, because it stopped being 'your' story the moment you engaged in a collaborative medium. From here on in, it's also the artist's story, and if you're working with an illustrator who's any good at all, you as a writer have to tamp down any control-freak tendencies you suffer under and relax into the process. — Mark Waid

Art, although produced by man's hands, is something not created by hands alone, but something which wells up from a deeper source out of our soul ... My sympathies in the literary as well as in the artistic field are drawn most strongly to those artists in whom I see most the working of the soul. — Vincent Van Gogh

I've worked with everyone from Ice Cube to Snoop Dogg ... right across to working with pop stars like Justin Timberlake. Why those artists came to me is because they wanted my sound. — Paul Oakenfold

I would like to see myself with some successful albums, and I'd love to be working with new artists as well as continuing to release my own material. I'd also like to be settled in a lovely place with a lovely partner and gorgeous mini ginger Jess! — Jess Glynne

Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving ... The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years. — David Foster Wallace

Hollywood is a special place; a place filled with creative geniuses - actors, screenwriters, directors, sound engineers, computer graphics specialists, lighting experts and so on. Working together, great art happens. But in the end, all artists depend on diverse audiences who can enjoy, be inspired by and support their work. — Ryan Kavanaugh

I'm finding that I'm working with more and more Latino artists, and that's exciting. — Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

In thirty years Iraq too has gone from being among the most modern and secular of Arab countries -with women working, artists thriving, journalists writing- into a squalid playpen for a megalomaniac. — Fareed Zakaria

A lot of excellent illustrators are working at the moment
especially in fantasy and children's books. It is exciting also to see graphic artists such as Dave McKean, in his film Mirrormask, moving between different media. I also greatly admire the more traditional work of Gennady Spirin and Roberto Innocenti. Kinuko Craft, John Jude Palencar, John Howe, Charles Vess, Brian Froud ... I'll stop there, as the list would get too long. But
in a fit of pride and justified nepotism
I'll add my daughter, Virginia Lee, to the list. Her first illustrated children's book, The Frog Bride [coming out in the U.K. in September, 2007], will be lovely. — Alan Lee

I actually like the collaboration of working with different artists. — Howard Shore

Working with Robert, Robert [Elswit] is a storyteller. He's not a cinematographer, he's a storyteller. And to me, that's the graduation I hope to get to in my profession. That I'm not just an actor, I'm a storyteller. And I think that takes a long time in, when you have one job on a movie set. Makeup artists, actor, whatever. To graduate from just that to storyteller. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Germany is a country that has absolutely had to since the Second World War ask itself massive moral questions. And it's reforged its identity based on culture. I mean, the amount of artists living and working in Berlin is unparalleled. It's one of the strongest economies, not only in Europe, but globally, and it's because of its understanding of the importance of culture. — Cate Blanchett

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn't been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields. — Steve Jobs

There was definitely a point in my thirties when I thought, 'Oh, wow, I'm not the youngest person on the set anymore.' But I like it. Working with younger artists is totally exciting. — Spike Jonze

There are few gardens that can be left alone. A few years of neglect and only the skeleton of a garden can be traced ... Japanese artists working with a few stones and sand four hundred years ago achieved strangely lasting compositions. However there, too, but for the hands that have piously raked the white sand into patterns and controlled the spread of moss and lichens, little would remain. — Russell Page

Many excellent artists working today unfortunately lack the indispensable gifts necessary for demagoguery and self-promotion, while the bad ones are full of passionate intensity. — Roman Genn

We've always believed that popular culture and populist politics go hand in hand. It's an honor to be working with so many respected and influential artists, and we're indebted to them for having the courage to speak out at a time when our country so desperately needs change. For our 2.5 million members and far beyond, the Vote for Change tour will have a seismic cultural impact. — Eli Pariser

United Artists wanted to do records with me. I had no idea, what a rare thing that was ... to make an album. And they put a guy with me working on songs, and I got busy with films. I just kind of let it slide. Isn't that amazing? — John Astin

And a lot of the artists and people that we hired were fans of Transformers growing up, so having so many fans working on my crew really kept me on point. — Michael Bay

I think the relationship is very tenuous between fashion and art. Many designers have built relationships with artists, which is not something I personally did. But it's true, sometimes you see artists working for a designer or a brand on some specific project or taking care of their environment and making an amazing store. — Olivier Theyskens

Working with other artists and sharing your passions is great. — Leona Lewis

I have a real interest in working with younger Native artists. I think it's a very important way for Native people to communicate the realities of our culture and remember our ancestors. — John Trudell

I believe that working independently will give artists the ability to communicate the full extent of their art and not just a piece of it that might sell. — Tom DeLonge

I like messing around, and I like working with artists who I respect. — Shia Labeouf

I definitely want to work with Thom Yorke. I want to work with Damien Marley; there's a few international artists I wouldn't mind working with - like Massacre Children would be ill, and I still have an affinity for the U.K. hip hop scene. — Lupe Fiasco

I'm really fortunate to have been to the schools I've been to, and to have the experiences I've had. And, partly since my parents are retired teachers, I've got the desire to give back. When I knew that I had that instinct, I got certified (through the Creativity Coaching Association) and I started working with artists of all kinds - though now I focus on writers. — Steven C. Harper

I think working with artists is incredibly important for everybody in the world, but also, it is a way of seeing the world differently. — Rose McGowan

Of course we had the best possible classical education, which gave us a very strong foundation and tradition. But we also learned a lot by collaborating with different pop/rock artists and especially by recording and working in the studio. — Luka Sulic

My life as a painter influences my teaching and my duties as president of CCA - and I hope some of the experience of working at an exciting art school also spills over into my studio work. I believe most artists are adept at juggling multiple responsibilities - whether it's work, teaching, caring for family members or attending to relationships - with their studio commitment. — Stephen Beal

I'd been to Stourhead and was inspired by the perfect parity between architecture and art; in fact, the architecture is the art. I wrote a piece called 'Not Sculpture Park,' because most of these things become car parks for bought-in sculpture. The artists should be working with the site, not just plonking pieces down. — Charles Jencks

What's good about many people liking the work is that when I want to collaborate or am interested in the synergy of artists working together, nobody ever says no to me when I ask to work with them. — Rei Kawakubo

Working with younger artists kind of tests your judgment. You're not always right, but when you are, it's exciting. — Larry Gagosian

I was working with real artists [in the Rum Diary] , and that's difficult to do and very rare, in this industry, ironically. — Amber Heard

A lot of people found themselves working at the Factory and some even in his bed as a result of random occurrences like your call. Most famous artists have never been all that interested in meeting strangers. That was not the case with Andy Warhol at all. — Bob Colacello

I love theater. To have the people onstage right there, to be working in concert with other artists, this is a like a school of fish moving together. — Phylicia Rashad

Our job as actors, especially in front of a camera, is almost like textile artists. We spend so much time getting the right texture of yarn, and working out the color scheme, and binding off the weave, and making it just right. — Anthony Heald

Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There's something magical about that place. There are a lot of people innovating, and that's not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there's a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great art science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor. — Walter Isaacson

I love L.A., but I don't live there. I spent some time there when I was recording 'Kaleidoscope,' mainly working with some of the artists I collaborated with. The city and people in L.A. have a great vibe and the weather is always beautiful. — Tiesto

When I and the other young artists were working in comics, our work carried with it a particularly American slant. After all, we were Americans drawing and writing about things that touched us. As it turned out, the early work was, you might say, a comic book version of Jazz. — Joe Simon

Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. — Steve Jobs

I think, you know, for me, whatever I need to slot into to make that music the best it can be or help the artists, or whoever I'm working with, achieve whatever vision they have in their head for a song. — Mark Ronson

I have a lot of projects I get asked for, but the opera house really is my house - my home. It's where I feel comfortable and confident and I get to explore these big human stories and dramas and collaborate with extraordinary people, great talented artists and administrators and other people who are passionate about it and support it. It's like working with a great big family - the family you love and enjoy being with all the time. — Jake Heggie

I have found, and most artists are probably this way, that [when] you're working on some kind of idea, the idea makes demands. — Michelle Stuart

There are some artists that don't like working with other females, which is fine. They have their own thing. I personally love being surrounded by other females. — Bonnie McKee

The music business is a place where the artists are all treated like we're working for the people who are working for us. That can obviously be exaggerated when you're a female. — Sinead O'Connor

Art should never be a slave to commerce, but for all working artists that's exactly what it must be. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

I believe the media pretty much dictates the way relationships are handled, even in the way we handle ourselves. Abuse, cheating, threesomes, it's inspired by music and television. Irresponsible artists and writers with a hidden agenda, just working against the moral fabric that God intended for us to have. — Tony Gaskins

The real tough thing is working with actors. I'm a designer and used to working with artists, so there is some familiarity with the personalities that come up, but actors are their own animal. — Rick Heinrichs

I think most artists find it difficult to part with their work but it's the parting that keeps us alive and keeps us working. In the case of the chariot, although it's been sold I actually still have it, just in another form. — Kit Williams

... consider the meaning of these images. Every time you're working with them, ask yourself: what do they mean? And, even more important, what do they mean to me? The more specific and personal something is, the more its universality emerges. — Fiona Wood

For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It's about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact. — Mike Leigh

It is something that artists do all the time unconsciously, working in the style of someone they consider a great master. I just wanted to make that relationship literal. — Sherrie Levine

Most inventors and engineers I've met are like me - they're shy and they live in their heads. They're almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone where they can control an invention's design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don't believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by committee. If you're that rare engineer who's an inventor and also an artist, I'm going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You're going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you're working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team — Susan Cain

The idea that any art is achieved 'intuitively' is a dehumanization of the brains, effort, and the traditions of the artist, and a classification of said artist as subhuman. It is those supposed incapable of intelligence, training, or connection with a tradition who are described as working by instinct or intuition. — Joanna Russ

This age needs rather men like Shakespeare, or Milton, or Pope; men who are filled with the strength of their cultures and do not transcend the limits of their age, but, working within the times, bring what is peculiar to the moment to glory. We need great artists who are willing to accept restrictions, and who love their environments with such vitality that they can produce an epic out of the Protestant ethic.... Whatever the many failings of my work, let it stand as a manifesto of my love for the time in which I was born. — John Updike

The artists are the most powerful ones, the creators, first are the painters, working without words, second are the music composers, and third are the writers. — Robert Black

Working with composers often is a really frustrating experience because you speak a different language and, oftentimes, they take two or three jobs, at the same time. They're difficult and pretentious and they're tormented artists. — Peter Berg

Something great about 'The Last Ship' is that it employs a lot of actors, and a lot of actors are getting work because of it, and all these people are in here, and all these artists are working together. — John Pyper-Ferguson

I think artists who are attracted to working on the Net will adjust their work to the capabilities of a very small screen. — Laurie Anderson

My characters have nothing. I'm working with impotence, ignorance ... that whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something unusable - something by definition incompatible with art. — Samuel Beckett

'Dawson's Creek' was my introduction to the industry. It put some money in my pocket and it put me in the position I wanted to be in, where I could audition for projects that I wanted to be a part of. I didn't find it creatively fulfilling in any way, though. Working with artists excites me, but 'Dawson's Creek' didn't do that. — Michael Pitt

I want to keep working. I want to step away from young adult fiction. I want to do theater periodically - Farragut North reminded me how great it is. I started out in theater. I trained in theater and then I kind of fell into film and TV. I want to work with interesting artists, talented actors, talented directors, and talented scripts. Not necessarily leading roles. — Max Irons

[W]e have reason to ask what artists are working specially for children, and whether they are running with the popular tide or saying something special.... In America, we had the 'parlor gift book' makers, but we also had Howard Pyle. — Louise Seaman Bechtel

Working with David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky or even Steven Soderbergh isn't really like a typical Hollywood movie. These are true artists, and have a certain amount of freedom when they work, and they're more like independent filmmakers making their way through big studios. — Vincent Cassel

That's what artists and athletes do day in and day out. Whether you see them at work or not the process is ongoing. They are working to achieve their heart's desire to either enlighten or entertain anyone who cares to watch or listen. Some of them achieve glory but others just do it because they love to and they are driven to.

When something, anything, interferes with that desire, their sense of self is jeopardized and they have to struggle to hang on to their identity. That's the real cost involved in producing a painting, writing a novel, or hitting over .300 for the season. — Richard Marcus

Surprisingly, I don't throw away that much. I don't move forward with a lot of things unless they're going somewhere. You also have to remember that when you're working with other artists, you have to be really careful about how you deal with that stuff. — Steven Soderbergh

I think great artists and great engineers are similar, in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. — Steve Jobs

Collaborative workshops and writers' peer groups hadn't been invented when I was young. They're a wonderful invention. They put the writer into a community of people all working at the same art, the kind of group musicians and painters and dancers have always had. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Working alone on a poem, a poet is of all artists the most free. The poem can be written with a modicum of technology, and can be published, in most cases, quite cheaply. — James Fenton

But artists aren't the only marginalized folks controlling real estate. Think about the colonizing role that wealthy white gay men have played in communities of color; they're often the first group to gentrify poor and working-class neighborhoods. Harlem is a good example. Gays have moved in and driven up rents, as have renegade young white students, who want to be cool and hip. This is colonization, post-colonial-style. After all, the people who are "sent back" to recover the territory are always those who don't mind associating with the colored people! And it's a double bind, because some of these people could be allies. Some gay white men are proactive about racism, even while being entrepreneurial. But in the end, they take spaces, redo them, sell them for a certain amount of money, while the people who have been there are displaced. And in some cases, the people of color who are there are perceived as enemies by white newcomers. — Bell Hooks

I hate working with artists who don't have something to say or when they have something that sounds cool but isn't really them. — Drumma Boy

I assumed from the outset that photography was already art, and that I and other people working in photography were artists. I understand now that this was a minority point of view. — Lewis Baltz

So I'm happiest when I'm working with artists and writers, and involved in stories, whether we're talking about animation or movies or comics or television. — Stan Lee