Michael Leunig Quotes

I think this is true for all artists. My senses are very important to me.

When I draw something, the brain and the hands work together.

To write a story, I think you really have to open yourself up to the world.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don't know what that is; I don't think too much about that.

I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.

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.

We don't design by calculator or by demographics or anything like that. We really are a group of creative, sensitive people. We have our charmed little world where we get to make things. We're really lucky.

One of the things I love about directing is I love actors, because no matter how complex they are, once you get down to working and talking to them and the toughest guy will want you to open them up and he wants to show you stuff he was afraid to show anybody before.

I've never gotten thick skin. If you close yourself off and you get this protective armor, there is a price you pay with that - of not feeling. And feeling is important when you are a songwriter.

I think great art comes from being open and creative with somebody, and of course, if feelings start getting involved in that, it can either make things fantastic or really messy.

Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems.

Even though people think I am more of a conceptual artist, I am actually very intuitive. For me, it is still a matter of allowing things to naturally rise to the top of my mental pile, and then I make them.

I'm reclusive when it comes to me giving art away because I get real sensitive about that and critiques.

Your brain forms a story and, if you're lucky, there's a line where the story takes over the brain. You don't even know what you have.

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

Artists recognize other artists as soon as the pencil begins to move.

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.

A really intelligent man makes an indifferent painter. For painting requires a certain blindness, a partial refusal to be aware of all the options.

The ideas come afterwards, when the picture is finished.

I am either blessed or cursed with having little barrier between feeling emotions and displaying them for all to see. My heart is on my sleeve. It's not comfortable but... I am an artist so it's useful and my friends are used to me getting teary at any moment.

You know a trillion times more about art than me. But I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary to know all that much. You just make what you wanna see, right? It’s a game, right? It’s like being paid for dreaming.

I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time.

That's the most important thing in art: to be aware, pay attention, be inspired - but it should come ultimately from you.

(Songwriting) It's a gift. It all comes from somewhere. I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience.

As an experienced artist, I carry my work like a secret pregnancy. I am always aware of inner life and the need to protect it.