Artistic Progression Quotes

Hip-hop as a culture itself goes through stages. It grows - it's breathing, living. I've noticed that we usually start off conscious, then we wind up very highly sexual, and then we thug it out. Then things get a little funny again, with comedy and that kind of thing.

The transition from fan to performer to recording artist, for me, was like learning how to dive... and each board got higher and higher.

If an artist is any good at all, then he or she will have a later phase that's more interesting than the early one.

I want to grow as an artist, and I'm taking a step out. I want my music to mature.

In the beginning, I started doing portraits of children, and of course, children have large eyes. For some reason, they just started getting bigger and bigger. Then, when I started painting imaginary children rather than real ones, they became bigger still.

Whenever I've improved, gone up a level in sound-making, it's been because I've done an album.

I grew up listening to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and every record those bands put out was very unique in its own right. I have that mentality. too: if a song sounds like something I've already done, then I'll throw it out, because I want each record to be a progression.

An artist conscientiously moves in a direction which for some good reason he takes, putting one work in front of the other with the hope he'll arrive before death overtakes him.

It's always necessary to seek for perfection. Obviously, for us, this word no longer has the same meaning. To me, it means: from one canvas to the next, always go further, further.

Movies and television show build on top of each other, succeed one another. In a large way, in terms of filmmaking aesthetics, they evolve because they can't help but be a consequence of all the movies and TV shows that came before it.

I'm too grateful that I continue to grow as an actor. I hope I get better. I feel like I am. But it's a roll of the dice every time you make a movie. Nobody knows.

'Law 3' shows my growth as a rapper. I don't really like maintaining, so on every project, I'm going to show you my growth.

I always try to better myself with every movie I make. I don't take anything sitting back, and so I try to learn from every film I make and carry that onto the next movie because I think it's important as a filmmaker to keep growing with each film, and I think I am growing with each movie.

The reason 'Fireball' is my favorite album of that period is that without 'Fireball,' we would never have been able to make 'Machine Head.'

I think everything I do is my early work. I can't wait to get on to the later stuff.

Film was something that I didn't see as a step up from music videos, though obviously, music videos, the fact that you work with a crew and a film camera, are the closest to film I've ever been. That is the only schooling I've ever had.

Basically, a band's first record is them coming together and really learning everything, and then, after they're on the road and really become a unit, the next record slams.

You get better as an actor over time if you're growing. Like singers.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

The idea of using media for expressing yourself artistically is kind of something I learned from my mother and my father. So for me, I think growing up wanting to be an artist, I always imagined myself sort of crossing over or mixing media and so it was a natural evolution for me to try to express in a filmic way or in a visual way. It just kind of seems like a natural sort of progression for me in terms of what I'm trying to do as an artist.

It's not like I'm not writing great music anymore, it's just that I want to take it another level.

Progression is important. I'm always going to play music in the general vein of rock'n'roll, but when I started I was very much associated with the West Coast lo-fi thing and I didn't want to get anchored in with anything that was just in vogue for the time being.

I like to think that I've grown as an actor and things have changed, and I think so.

People don't tend to notice, but in the past 10 years especially there's been a lot of growth in how I write songs and what goes into them. You can listen to Mountain Goats from 1991 to 2007 and never hear a seventh chord. In 2007 or 2008, I started working on the piano to grow as a songwriter. I started throwing major sevens in and sixes and more interesting stuff.

Time will change and with it music will too. Our speed has changed, clothes have changed, food habits have changed, so why should music remain the same?