John Piper Quotes

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

As an artist, you don't think about the parabola or the arc you're describing or where you're going to ultimately end up, you're just kind of crawling around, seeing what's out there.

I'll take anything and slap it on a canvas.

One must act in painting as in life, directly.

No dance has ever turned out the way I thought it would, because I trust enough that I can start something with some ideas and then it takes itself somewhere.

I don't even think about maintaining a relevance. I just think about what do I want to paint, what am I gonna do now, what am I gonna do later.

I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.

I don't know in advance what I am going to put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colours I am going to use.

Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar.

I have an idea of a set of colors and see what I have. A lot of things, the best, more magical things in the paintings just sort of happen. They aren't things I thought of in advance. They are more things I am given. What paint does, in watercolor more than oil but it happens in oil too, are things one never expects if you work freely. I suppose I learned a lot coming to this after years of playing improvisational music. I have to trust my intuition and I work in the moment, when that moment seems to be happening. And to leave it alone when it is not.

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident - and those end up being the magic. Every time I've followed my gut it's been better than when I've tried to do what I was supposed to do.

Most songs I write are spur-of-the-moment-type things. I have to be spontaneous. If not, songwriting can bore me. There is no pre-design or idea of what I am going to do when I go into the studio. It's all like that for me. I could go in and write two or three songs in an eight-hour session. You can't over-think songs. You just can't.

Usually, I am a compulsive person, and I need - sometimes urgently - to paint... Painting is close to poetry, is a kind of poetry expressed visually. It has to be spontaneous, rapid - at least in my case.

I just throw it out and see what happens. If it sounds and feels right, then I continue.

I don't sit down and say I'm going to write a song about this or that. They are never mapped out.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

When I'm writing a song, I'm just making stuff up as I go along.

I enjoyed art in school. I've always done little drawings and stuff like that. I don't really know what I'm doing with the painting, but I experiment.

And all of this, all these physical aspects of painting at that time excited me very much. You could do a picture in just black and white. I mean all the things, whether you're soliciting permission or not, do give you permission.

I never have a plan of what I am going to draw.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

I play as I feel.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

With 'Silver Linings,' I didn't feel - I was thinking of certain things, but I just said, 'Let me go with it.' You have to know what you're doing, where you're going with the scenes, and I put a lot of work into that. But when you're out there, at the same time you gotta be ready for anything.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.