Aaron Ruell Quotes

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

I just say I'm an artist who works with pictures and words.

I think when I do things outside of music, I am always thinking of different things that are eventually one way or another going to come back to my music. I have to make sure it is all cohesive, as that's important to me as an artist and a person.

I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera.

I do not feel any artist can produce great art without putting great personality into it. It is always a piece of you that goes on the screen or the canvass.

I'm glad movies aren't going to please everybody, they can't. But what they have to be is recognisable. I don't equate myself with a master painter, but I think you can recognise my films.

I like the idea that paintings are not representations of an artist's psyche. Making the paintings is what gives the artist her psyche in the first place.

Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise.

I still haven't made a film that defines who I am.

If you're using a computer as an artist and expressing your personal vision, I think your personal vision comes through.

I think making a movie is like drawing or creating an art piece. The artwork reflects part of your personality, but not all.

I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.

I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

I have to be able to be the artist that I am.

If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work.

For a long time, I was brilliantly achieving drawings that were inert, suffocating and dark. If ever you need illustrations that are inert, suffocating and dark, I know how to do them.

In front of the camera I look and I see visually what I've created.

To me, that is the essence of me as a photographer. It is those ideas, working with them, formulating them and eventually putting them down on paper, photographing them and then going on to the next step.

I had never really thought of myself as a writer; any writing I had done was just to give myself something to draw.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

With regards to music, I don't want to pigeonhole myself and say I am a musician or a visual artist, because I feel like it's all-encompassing, and I feel like every bit of my art is related to the other.

I think the person creates the artist. And I think when you get lost within your person, your artistry get lost, too. It's like in 'Birdman.' Because the artist inside you is attached to your soul. And when you're not attached to yourself anymore, the soul goes away. You can't let that happen.

I never analyzed whether I had a style or whether I didn't. I wouldn't be able to describe my style or even tell if I have one or not.

I've always considered myself a poet in everything that I do, whether it's photography or movie-making.

I've been a visual artist my entire life, so translating music to imagery has always come naturally to me. Tycho is an audio-visual project in a lot of ways, so I don't see a real separation between the visual and musical aspects; they are both just components of a larger vision.