Very few people have a natural feeling for painting, and so, of course, they naturally think that painting is an expression of the artist's mood. But it rarely is. Very often he may be in greatest despair and be painting his happiest paintings.
The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
The influence that Oakland has on my sound is about 90%. There's so many different elements to Oakland. Of course you have the street elements, but then you also have the culture and there's so much culture around. It's a competitive city, it's full of just great artists and talent. It gave me the confidence, the passion, the realness I try my hardest to portray, so it has had about 90% influence on me.
We grow hostile to many an artist or writer, not because we finally come to see he has deceived us, but because he thought no subtler means were required to ensnare us.
An artist's job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It's not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.
The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. ... One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great, individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV, by creating the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist.
As an artist I would like to eliminate the symbolic pretty much, for black is interesting not as a color but as a non-color and as the absence of color.
Naturally one would rather be a broad artist with power to evoke beauty from every phase of experience--but when one unmistakably isn't such an artist, there's no sense in bluffing and faking and pretending that one is.