Artistic Planning Quotes

Anytime I have an idea, I'll make sure that I put it down so that when we do sit down to write an album, I don't have to dream it all out of thin air. I don't have to be creative on the spur of the moment, or spontaneously artistic. I just take advantage of whenever creativity strikes.

I kind of do the drawing with the painting in mind, but it's very hard to guess at a size or a color and all the colors around it and what it will really look like.

God would have to beam into me what I was doing and what the album actually sounded like because usually when I start a project like that, I already know what the album sounds like before I start it.

I don't have much of a problem with interruptions. I keep a detailed record of paint and materials as a work on each painting. I can restart exactly where I left off.

Usually I begin things through a drawing, so a lot of things are worked out in the drawing. But even then, I still allow for and want to make changes. I kind of do the drawing with the painting in mind, but it's very hard to guess at a size or a color and the colors around it and what it will really look like. It's only a guess at the beginning, and then I try to refine it.

I've always gone into the studio with a very clear understanding of a song, of the words or, if it's an instrumental piece, of the melodies, and that never changes.

But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it.

I've written quite a few things, but I've put it on hold for now to see how everything fits together. Then I'll approach it and write specifically to see how the pieces fit in the puzzle.

I must always have a clear image of the form of a work before I begin. Otherwise there is no impulse to create.

Composing a concert is like composing a menu.... If you start with light pieces and play a 45-minute sonata after the interlude, it's like starting dinner with hors d'oeuvres and dessert and finishing with a Châteaubriand and vegetables.

I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can't be done in one picture.

All works of art should begin... at the end.

I'm just getting people warmed up a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, so I can fully come with, like, a 'Fix You' - type record, or 'One' by U2.

Music is like color or acting or whatever. It's really something I think about from the beginning. Not that I always know exactly what I'm going to use, but I don't see it as something like, "Let's find some songs now!" after we have a finished film.

I used to change things in my early paintings to get the nuance or feeling I wanted, but now I plan everything in my head before I do it.

I always wanted to, at some point, sit down and consider how to plot out one piece of work, one album, from start to finish.

The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.

Some filmmakers go into a film and it's already shot and cut in their head.

I've always got about four albums in my head.

I knew the second I finished the first record - 'House Of Balloons' - and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude.

When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.