Maureen Johnson Quotes

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me.

It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn't easy to paint oneself either.

If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work.

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

There was no image of the other biological half of myself. And as an artists, as a - as an - as a portraitist, the look of who you are was radically important to me.

Here I am, the artist, the person, the black woman, and the stereotype. I'm using myself and it has nothing to do with my muses or other women. It has to do with me. You see parts of my body moving, very collage like, flashing, and not speaking, just laying on a couch, looking out at the viewer.

Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.

I feel, as an artist, I should be able to express who I am and the things I come from, and the places I want to also be.

Well, you know, it's been interesting because an album is just a snapshot of where you are at that time. Not all pictures of everybody are just in jeans and a 'T' shirt, or a ball gown. You have many different sides and this is a snapshot of where you are at that time.

Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.

I think I'd say that my whole body of work is a reflection of who I am, but not any one specific thing.

There are different sides to me; I wanted to make a personal film but I would not want to make any film that does not reflect me in it. At least, not right now. I'm just too young to be doing that.

I think making a movie is like drawing or creating an art piece. The artwork reflects part of your personality, but not all.

How do I tell people who I am? Not being a writer, the only way is to sing songs that reflect my opinions.

People assume that a self-portrait is narcissistic and you're trying to reveal something about yourself: fantasies or autobiographical information. In fact, none of my work is about me or my private life.

A film reflects who you are as a building reflects the soul of its architect. I think what you feel and what you think and what you are is what the film is. It's not for me to talk about.

My music is a whole reflection of who I'm as an individual.

My art in my head just needs to come out for me - for my legacy and who I am.

I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all woman, as well as all of me.

The artist who paints the emotions creates an enclosed world... the picture... which, like a book, has the same interest no matter where it happens to be. Such an artist, we may imagine, spends a great deal of time doing nothing but looking, both around him and inside him.

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.

I write and sing about whatever I am able to understand and feel. I feel that it is healthier to look out at the world through a window than through a mirror. Otherwise, all you see is yourself and whatever is behind you.

In some way they are all self-portraits, but I think I know what you mean by asking this - I would say, it is too idealistic to paint yourself.

You are the artist and the art.