Cindy Sherman Quotes

To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing... When I find myself facing a blank page, that’s always going through my head. What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

I sometimes begin a drawing with no preconceived problem to solve, with only the desire to use pencil on paper... but as my eye takes in what is so produced, a point arrives where some idea crystallizes, and then a control and ordering begins to take place.

For me, the sketchbooks are more like a secret and wholly spontaneous jeu d'esprit and some of them I like as much as anything I have ever done. They are invariably without premeditation. I mean not only that I have no plan when I make them, I also have no plan to make them.

I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.

I wrote 'She's a Lady' on the back of a TWA menu, flying back from London after doing Tom Jones's TV show. Jones's manager wanted me to write him a song. If I have an idea and I don't have a pad of paper, I'll write on whatever is available. What's the difference? Paper is paper.

I don't believe that a writer does something wonderful spontaneously. I believe it's the result of years of living, of study, reading, his very personality and temperament. At one particular moment, all these come together and the artist 'expresses' himself.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

Being creative is my idea of heaven. I'm just incredibly fortunate that I can do it in artwork. Watercolor is what I started out with. What I love about watercolor is that a lot of happy accidents occur.

I'm trying to escape the shackles of a pen and a pad. I've sat in sessions with Jay-Z where he doesn't write anything down. He'll come up with the most incredible triple entendre, all in his head - it's amazing.

I think if you speak to any creative person, there's something so powerful - so intoxicating, if you will - about discovering another voice, another instrument, another way of looking at things, another way of perceiving things.

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.

Anyone in the arts has had an experience of seeing someone who they related to doing something and thinking, 'I could do that.' If you have one generation where you force its hand a bit, then the next one fills in the gaps, because it's seen an example of what can be done.

I would say any creative person has that: you can't just force a topic. Whether you're a painter, you want to do a cartoon. Anything. Something may come up that's not your style or suited to what you are working on at the moment. So you file it away and hopefully find a place for it.

We're all inspired by what has come before us, but hope to use the inspiration to create our own. That's the artist's journey. It's a pretty amazing path.

I sort of recognize it, as opposed to shaping it. Oh, that's a good idea, that's a good line. I wonder where I can use that. And when you get into a rhyme group like 'not,' you got a lot of rhymes, you got a lot of choices. The more you do it, the luckier you get.

You sit and you let your fingers go to wherever they are going to go. You wait until you start to hear something, and you start to figure out what it is that you're doing. And then you add another piece next to that piece, and wait to see if some kind of pattern or something interesting starts to grow, and then you cultivate it.

Sometimes I have good ideas. I love that part of our job. It's a constant process of searching, of exploring stuff, and realizing things. You can be in the middle of the film and it's like, "Oh my God! I think we need to do this! Maybe in this scene she should shave her head!"

If an idea seems to find its way towards a stage setting, that's the direction I take. I don't know if I'm trying to achieve anything other than to follow an idea on to the page.

If artists do have ideas, they're often not great.

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.

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

I couldn't say there is a formula to songwriting. Each time is a unique experience.

Color always vexed me because I would fight with the media I was using. I love coloring in Photoshop, and it's freed me to pursue ideas and techniques I wouldn't have otherwise attempted. Since I get to take an assignment from concept to final execution, I have more freedom in my idea-making processes.

I always say, and I truly believe this, that my work is three steps ahead of me. I have an idea for something and I tend to feel like it's leading me and I'll follow the process through, and it's not until after I've seen it that I truly understand why I'm doing this.