Ikue Mori Quotes

To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don't use a computer when I write, and I don't use a piano. I'm at a desk writing, and it's very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.

I'm inspired by art - in whatever form it takes. I love when I see a painting or a photograph that captures my attention.

Sometimes I'm on the pulse of what's happening in Hollywood, but other times, I'm just totally absorbed by what I'm creating on the easel.

I start a picture and I finish it.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

When a designer creates, he looks at the world around him.

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.

If it weren't for how esoteric the art world likes to be, I would love actually to play the music in the shows, painting the music that influences me most.

My painting does not come from the easel.

It'll help you be imaginative if you listen to classical music. It helps you understand dynamics and how important they are to create an environment.

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

For me, Picasso was the ultimate man. He taught me that photography is all about how you approach an image: what you do and what you don't do. He inspired me to go beyond what you think is in front of you.

I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors, form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter. At the same time I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea.

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.

I am an artist, you understand? For me, a picture is like poetry. When you make art, this is not coming from an intellectual place. It's coming from the deep side of your unconscious, your soul.

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?

My inspiration can come from anything - films, the street, paparazzi pictures.

I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious.

Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.

No matter how fast I could do it with the digital camera I don't think I would get the same thing out of it. The passion I have for formulating an idea stands alone. It is the important essence of what I do.

When I make music and I'm talking on records, it's like I'm painting a picture. In my mind, I'm seeing a film.

Making music and writing kind of come from the same creative place.

Hearing about a visual artist's approach can change the way you think about songwriting.