Wangechi Mutu Quotes

We all take from our artistic endeavors what we as individuals need, to make the process unique and fulfilling to ourselves.

I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

Whatever it is that I thirst for in my current project tends to turn up in my following project.

Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.

Somebody said us artists have trouble with success because art is derived from struggle. I disagree with that, because truely doing your art is success, whether you make money from it or not.

I think the act of condensing months or years of work down to a couple hours of entertainment is pretty wild and extremely rewarding.

To finish a song is the best feeling in the world.

All the work that I do, whether or not it ends up being commercially successful or not, feels like the most important thing to me while I'm doing it. I try to take something away from every project, and so they all feel like milestones for one reason or another.

In my experience a painting is not made with colors and paint at all. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint?

There are times when I've inhaled my work. There are artworks still inside of me.

Even though I've been putting out bodies of work for years, 'Beauty Behind the Madness' felt like the beginning.

Once I found art, it was a wrap.

When you sit down and there's nothing, and then you write a song and there's something, that's the most extraordinary feeling.

As someone whose music is connected to his personal growth, I feel an obligation to follow this muse wherever it leads.

What is important is satiating my creativity as an artiste.

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

Katagiri Roshi says: "Poor artists. They suffer very much. They finish a masterpiece and they are not satisfied. They want to go on and do another." Yes, but it's better to go on and do another if you have the urge than to start drinking and become alcoholic or eat a pound of good fudge and get fat.

So I don't think being an artist you can ever satisfy - the moment you do get satisfied is the moment you're done, really. I'm actually starting to bug out now, because it's not enough. I get joy and pleasure in the movies out there in the world that people are seeing, but for me, it's about making it. That's why I do it, is to make it, to deal with my life.

In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.

I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one.

I love creating. I am addicted to the drug of creation and creating things. I get a little depressed when I am struggling to find what I know is locked inside. If it's a lyric or something that is challenging me, I can be very depressed, but when it's like heaven opens up and it gives you a song, it's amazing. There's nothing else that I enjoy more probably.

I feel happy about the songs I've written. I'm a great lover of the craft of songwriting, and I sure admire it in other people when I see it - past and present. I feel comfortable with what I have accomplished. I feel happy to be able to work in that environment, and that I have a lot of songs left to be written, somewhere.

My primary thing is to make a painting, not necessarily to make a painting to sell for gazillions of dollars, but just to make a painting.

I'm very interested to see how this new painting will go - I know I want it big and stark, and as I said, I follow the muse, and that's when it always works perfectly for me.

You don't make a film because the audience is ready for it. You make a film because you have questions that are in your gut.