Artistic Transparency Quotes

I wear my musical heart on my sleeve and show all my influences off. I'm happy for someone to point out that my song sounds like someone else's.

You can hear some artists, hear five of their albums and still have no idea who they are. But if you've heard most of what I've recorded, you know me. You go from 'Honesty' to 'Going Through Hell' - you can listen to the hits, and they pretty much reflect who I am. 'Take a Back Road' is the same thing.

There is a considerable amount of manipulation in the printmaking from the straight photograph to the finished print. If I do my job correctly that shouldn't be visible at all, it should be transparent.

Is not art a tool we employ to peel the kitsch off life? Layer by layer art strips life bare. The more abstract it gets, the more transparent the air is. Can it be that the farther it is removed from life, the clearer art becomes?

I think it's more important to show your work to the public.

I am a huge fan of Adrian Piper: how she works, how she reveals her process in the work, how she writes about it.

A true artist should have no secrets. On the stage, you must be able to transmit every emotion to the spectator.

Criticism on my works is like this: you've worked hard all of your life, you went to Oxford, and you've done this and that, and you're an art critic. Your job is to unravel the "secret" or whatever, and you come across an entity like me. It's going to piss you off. Because there's no great secret, what you see is what you get, and anyone can understand what I'm doing. So, it's almost like I make this critic-person redundant, just by my attitude, and they resent me for that.

The Actor should make you forget the existence of author and director, and even forget the actor.

The better the acting is, the less visible the director and the less visible the actor.

Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art - and in criticism - today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are.

When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself.

I started blogging because I didn't know if I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to talk to other people online who were doing art, so I would post work and ask for feedback. I loved that an artist like James Jean would show his process on his blog. It became this open dialogue that, unfortunately, we don't have a lot in the fine-art world. People will say, "Wow, you share a lot." I'm like, "No, I make it a point to." Instagram is a great place for people to share failure. I don't want people to think that being an artist is some glamorous life.

I decided a handful of years ago that I just want to write songs that you can understand as soon as you put the record on. There's no need to veil what's happening in the song the way I used to.

The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker, who hands over to the words.