James Horner Quotes

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.

Sometimes I can see the whole painting from the outset in my mind's eye. But more often than not, that idea doesn't last the duration of the painting. Sometimes it comes out easy, just as I had envisaged. But that is reasonably rare.

Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.

The way I create music is maybe like a painting, to compose in a more visual way. Basically it's the music that I want to hear- that's my inspiration and bottom line. I just try to get ideas from books, movies, paintings.

My painting does not come from the easel.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

I sometimes think that what I do as a writer is make a kind of colouring book, where all the lines are there, and then you put in the colour.

I have to take it as a given that I have got a certain ability to do something. I can be an artist, which is take something and transform it into another thing. I can just see something, and I can see my painting.

As opposed to putting too much confidence in myself, or in an image or a scene or a set of brushes, I really want to allow the oil paint to perform, to show me the things that it wants to do, beyond my imagination.

I can't sculpt. But if I were a sculptor, as you start to get something that actually looks like what you want, then it starts to be fun. That's the way I find writing.

People get inspired to write, paint, draw, sing, sculpt, dance in many different ways. And there are many types of art. But the one thing that they all have in common is that they are all a sort of magic. Sometimes the magic flows from one’s fingers, other times it is transferred to the person who experiences the result. Magic has always worked in mysterious ways.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I start a picture and I finish it.

Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute.

I want to do nothing chic, I want to have ideas before beginning a piece.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

When I got my first loft, I still didn't know what I was going to paint... There were long stretches when I just sat there and thought without interruption.

To be an artist, you need to play inside your work.

Painters have always needed a sort of veil upon which they can focus their attention. It's as though the more fully the consciousness is absorbed, the greater the freedom of the spirit behind.

Usually, I create tunes that are fragmented. I think the biggest obstacle for people with their creativity is that they feel they have to sit down and create this finished, polished product.

No, I never had any dreams. The process of art is a dream in itself. The artist just doesn't... you work out something. It's yours. You don't have to go to sleep to do that. You do that on the canvas.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

Being in the studio is like painting, you know, you can really take your time, and try different things, and kind of go deep into it.