Barry McGee Quotes

It's insane to be a writer and not be a reader. When I'm writing I'm more likely to be reading four or five books at once, just in bits and pieces rather than subjecting myself to a really brilliant book and thinking, "Well what's the point of me writing anything?" I'm more likely to read a book through when I take a break from writing.

I carry a notebook full of sketches of pictures I want to take - they are really scruffy sketches, but at least I am going out there with a clear objective.

I started to draw desert islands. They were just rough, shapes in the middle of the page. Then I began drawing shapes within those shapes and I was amazed how quickly the islands got better. It took off from there.

When I look through my sketchbooks, they bring back moments that I would otherwise have completely forgotten.

After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.

My sketchbooks are usually just a line on one page or a circle, which to most people must be totally meaningless. But to me, they are very important to the thing I am working on.

Growing up, I enjoyed drawing, but it was always in the service of an idea. I drew all the time, and I enjoyed making.

I sometimes sit and draw people on the bus, or some fantasy hybrid animal. You know, wherever the hand will lead.

For me, the sketchbooks are more like a secret and wholly spontaneous jeu d'esprit and some of them I like as much as anything I have ever done. They are invariably without premeditation. I mean not only that I have no plan when I make them, I also have no plan to make them.

More important than having a romance with the object that I'm drawing, is to have a romance with the mark that I am making.

When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything.

I start a picture and I finish it.

I don't know why I paint what I paint. I think it comes out - it's kind of my subconscious or something.

I love creating images, of course, because I'm an artist.

When I think about how I want to reach an audience, I just wanted to make pieces that were inspired by something that gave me so much pleasure.

You don't get inspiration sitting at a drawing board or in front of your computer.

My painting does not come from the easel.

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.

I spend a lot of time working as a painter and in my studio I go from upstairs where I paint to downstairs where I play and record, so I get this thing crossing over.

For a sculptor, a painter, a weaver, a potter, the dialogue between one's materials and what one makes from them is easy to see: discover a new material or a new way to use a familiar one, and new things can be made, sometimes leading to the discovery of more new material, leading to more creation.

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.

Cartoonists' dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw.

The drawing is already partly there - it's in the paper. And the paper is talking before you do.

A part of my kind of design and inspiration ethos is that I carry around a leather notebook and I sketch in it, doodle in it, write notes in it, and I put pictures in it.

I love being an illustrator because I get to read really great stories, work with amazing people, travel and see places I never would've seen. And I get to draw all the time.