Bill Griffith Quotes

Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good.

One must not believe any of those mythologies about oneself as an artist.

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade.

Art has been good for my soul. And it's been good for my brain. I think I'm a better painter now than I was a musician growing up. You struggle to see things and translate an image through your hands to a canvas.

I really don't think of my work in terms of a genre. I think of it in terms of what I want to say, what I think is cool, and what I'm good at.

I think that, to be an artist, you have to have a big enough ego to believe that people out in the world want to see what you think is a good idea. And if you don't have that sense of ego, then the minute that idea goes into the world, self-doubt kicks in.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

I just feel if you are an artist, you always have something to prove, if you are in music or in films, you have to prove that you can still do your best.

My best efforts were some modern things that looked like very lousy Matisses. Thank God I had the sense to realize they were lousy, and leave Paris.

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 made some good pictures, and I made some bad ones. I wasn't trying to build an image, though; I was trying to build a life for myself.

To be a good artist, you have to serve the work of art and allow it to be what it is supposed to be.

I just consider myself an artist. I don't really rap. I don't really sing. I just do what I feel is good, and people like it.

Painting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul, thus have I passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life.

Music is art, and once you become an artist, you need to learn how to accept criticism.

I can't imagine anybody who ends up being an artist who didn't pass through a time of geekiness.

I've been painting off and on since I was in sixth grade. I don't paint when I'm acting - I'm not really able to split my focus that way. I do it intensely when I'm doing it, but I'm reluctant to take myself too seriously as a painter because that would mean there would be pressure to be better than I am.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

The act of saying what you do helps shape you as an artist.

My view of myself as an artist expanded because of the time I spent at Cal Arts.

Traffic' was an album that had a significant amount of songs. It was not complete and I felt didn't fully represent me as a person or as the artist I want to be and so when I started the writing process for 'The Autobiography' I was really turning a corner in my life.

I feel that I am more aware of my artistry.

I made a quote-unquote 'album' for my senior project of high school. As soon as I finished making it I realized it wasn't the kind of music I wanted to make.

You have to challenge yourself about the choices you make as an artist.