Mark Mothersbaugh Quotes

Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child.

I think about that 'empty' space a lot. That emptiness is what allows for something to actually evolve in a natural way. I've had to learn that over the years - because one of the traps of being an artist is to always want to be creating, always wanting to produce.

As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion.

People criticize you for trying new things. I think, 'I'm new! I'm 22!' I don't know exactly what my sound is or what I want my album to sound like, so I'm not releasing it yet. While I'm experimenting, I'll let you in on the journey, and you can hear it for free.

I'm very happy with my lot. I like the variety I get. You don't want to spend your life repeating yourself. It's true of any kind of artist, you want to explore as wide and far as you can go, so that's what I've been trying to do.

I drew as a child, they tell me. I can vaguely remember doing it. And then I drew again in the late years at high school.

Inviting artists to do something, you want it to be a place where they're going to feel challenged and excited and that will maybe open up some new doorway in their own lives or their own creative practice.

As an artist, I do not want to limit my skills to one medium alone.

I think if you're a creative person, then you're always kinda looking to move things along - 'Where else can I go? Where can I take this?' From painters to photographers - anything creative in the arts - if you're a true artist, I think you'll always look to do something else. 'Where else can I go with it?' Do you know what I mean?

When you are a kid you have your own language, and unlike French or Spanish or whatever you start learning in fourth grade, this one you are born with, and eventually lose...Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult...is only a slow sewing it shut.

If you're any kind of artist, you've got to ... keep opening yourself to new possibilities.

We have to keep in practice like musicians. Besides, there are still potentialities to be realized in color film. To us, it's just like bringing up a child. You don't stop after you've had it.

A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside... I'm going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.

Me being able to be acting and doing other things has opened me as an artist, and I think even more from a visual standpoint.

Brain power improves by brain use, just as our bodily strength grows with exercise. And there is no doubt that a large proportion of the female population, from school days to late middle age, now have very complicated lives indeed.

I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.

Learning is about much more than science and math. Doing theater, music, and art in school really helps children's minds grow because they're using different parts of their brains. Parents who care should insist on that.

College had a great deal to do with my development as a person. I don't know if I'd be the artist I was if it wasn't for goin' to school like that. School is a good place - it ain't for everybody, but I think it's for most people.

Well, the beginning is actually quite easy, because I can still be quite free about the way I handle things - colours, shapes. And so a picture emerges that may look quite good for a while, so airy and colourful and new. But that will only last for a day at most, at which point it starts to look cheap and fake. And then the real work begins - changing, eradicating, starting again, and so on, until it's done.

I don't think I was ever thinking critically about my aesthetic, I think it's enough when you're little just to understand that you can give yourself the permission to try and see things differently or create something original, even though you probably won't make anything original for a really long time.

I don't think there's anything to be afraid of. Failure brings great rewards - in the life of an artist.

Abstract thinking leads to greater creativity... But in our businesses and our lives, we often do the opposite. We intensify our focus rather than widen our view.

It will help at every state along the road to learning. For the pre-school years we will help needy children become aware of the excitement of learning.

When I paint, I never think of selling. People simply fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights.

I do not think that you can try and systematize education for the whole world. I would try experiments in small communities and in schools to see how they work out, instead of taking the children of an entire nation and trying to bring them up on the same system.