Richard MacDonald Quotes

I can be working on a collection and a film at the same time. It can take a lot out of me, but the processes come from the same source. From a brief I set myself I can make a film, I can make a collection, I can make an installation.

Color always vexed me because I would fight with the media I was using. I love coloring in Photoshop, and it's freed me to pursue ideas and techniques I wouldn't have otherwise attempted. Since I get to take an assignment from concept to final execution, I have more freedom in my idea-making processes.

I didn't have the time to literally write and draw the strip at the same time.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.

I've always said I'm more influenced in what I do by artists, and how they work, how they think, and the freedom they're given to work and think, than I really am by other writers.

The studio is a place where I can experiment before I'm prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time.

Being creative is my idea of heaven. I'm just incredibly fortunate that I can do it in artwork. Watercolor is what I started out with. What I love about watercolor is that a lot of happy accidents occur.

It's actually very freeing to be given permission as an artist to let that ride and to really let it ride, to actually experience it and bring it out of you. It's been uncomfortable and it's freeing at the same time.

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.

Even if you're not releasing songs, the act of creativity is important. That's the part I love, when you're in the moment. The rest of it I'm not particularly interested in at all.

Some artists can work under one guise, whether it's a name or a band or doing film soundtracks, put all of their ideas in one pot and move on. Me, I need to compartmentalize.

You just gotta record stuff and move on and make new material. Painters don't wait until they're in some specific gallery before they move on to the next painting.

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

If I was an artist, and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.

I don't think you can be taught how to make art. You can be coached, but on a fundamental level you have to figure it out for yourself. You have to learn how your own mind works, figure out your own relationship to the art; you essentially have to invent it completely for yourself.

You definitely want to do the little films. They're always going to be harder, but you don't do them to make money. You do them so you can see what you can make with the research that you have.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

I'm very interested to see how this new painting will go - I know I want it big and stark, and as I said, I follow the muse, and that's when it always works perfectly for me.

When I work alone, it can be like dabbling with a canvas. Maybe you paint over bits, and it starts to form its own life and lead you off in a direction. It becomes an intuitive, subconscious process.

When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.

I think of a piece, and then people who are competent fabricate it. But lately I've started finger painting, which probably should be a joke but isn't!

The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.

I see my studio like a laboratory, where I work like an investigator - it's almost forensic. I love the discovery process in painting.

You can never tell when an artist really will take up someone's work and work with it happily.