Jason Moran Quotes

I see a lot of art; we see a lot of music, films at Sundance... that influences me and informs me more than theater just because I make a bigger effort to see other art forms.

I like to use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.

I looked at Rembrandt and Superman, Matisse and Bugs Bunny, and began to make my own pictures.

I do remember when it occurred to me the first time, when I got the idea of painting the way I feel at a given moment. I was sitting in a chair and felt it pressing against me. I still have the drawings where I depicted the sensation of sitting.

As far as the style, I was fascinated by surrealism.

I'm not a video brat. I don't derive all my inspiration through movies. I get it from a lot of other places, too.

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 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.

Before they did all those shows on Jackson Pollock, I loved the way he formulated his paintings. I loved Basquiat - I was into the whole Beat generation, Kerouac, etc., and all those artists talked about that and Kerouac, so I just got in the middle of being spontaneous.

By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. This was the origin of the paintings in The Frieze of Life.

All the art for Tool is done by the me and the band.

When you create art, the world has to wait.

I never consciously do any work directly influenced from any movie, unless I'm doing a parody.

I wanted to create this dialogue between music and visual art and vice versa. No matter what part of the spectrum they fill, whether it's visual, music, or whatever, artists are interested in other art forms. Your brain is already kind of firing in that way.

John Cage is someone I got into as a visual artist, before I even knew his music. I don't think a lot of people even know that he does visual art.

I think about art a lot only in two contexts. One is narrative... The other thing that I'm interested in, which is tangential, but not unrelated... All art to me is about problem solving.

Any innovation that is evident in my paintings is a direct result of something that happened in the course of making a print.

My drawings are the result of my sculpture.

All I care about these days is painting — photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing.

My inspiration came from the land, ... and, of course, from Paul Klee . . . and the poetics of his paintings.

I make music as good as possible, but I do reference cultural icons, because I want my music to be a time capsule of 2007.

I wanted to go in a different direction, artistically. But having somebody like Terry[Crews] in it was your ace in the hole. That makes it very strong, so I definitely had to jump in with both feet.

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

There are certain things I do because I am creatively inspired and artistic.

My life is a creative act--like a painting, or a concerto.