Joe McNally Quotes

Some people would say my paintings show a future world and maybe they do, but I paint from reality. I put several things and ideas together, and perhaps, when I have finished, it could show the future.

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.

Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure. If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life.

The camera gave me an incredible freedom. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely.

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

One of the most important reasons for living is to do something - live outside of yourself and put together an idea, an idea that you want to explore and then complete... Awaken your creative sensitivities!

I have four or five ideas that just keep floating around and I want to kind of just let one - like a beautiful butterfly, let it land somewhere.

I love how people in this business push themselves to know themselves, the world, and their creativity better.

The camera has always been a magic wand for me, giving me access to places where I could try new experiments.

If you're a creative person, what inspires you is always changing; it's always shifting.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Like all artists, I go through creative spurts.

One of these days, I'm going to publish a book of all the pictures I did not take. It is going to be a huge hit.

Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.

If you capture the first thought that you have when you're creating, and then play that to people, it's kind of like the listeners are part of that beginning. And that's the most exciting part.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art. They are all the same absolutely.

To me, that is the essence of me as a photographer. It is those ideas, working with them, formulating them and eventually putting them down on paper, photographing them and then going on to the next step.

Think of the imagination as a giant stone from which we carve out new ideas. As we chip away, our new ideas become more polished and refined. But if you start by editing your imagination, you start with a tiny stone.

The part of the process that's exciting to me is feeling like I'm in a place I've never been before, in every way. Without that, I don't know if I'd be a writer.

I like to choreograph and create and design the costumes and do it all and then step back and watch it and then move on to the next project.

A lot of our creative flow comes from a place of curiosity and exploration. It often feels like we're excavating and asking questions and not just giving answers but really just exploring.

If you follow the lead of the artists, they will take you places that you could never go on your own.

I think when you're being creative, you still attach it to reality somehow.