Jim Hodges Quotes

Making music with people is a very intimate process.

For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what you paint. It's all just a routine to connect yourself finally with other people.

Art consists in making others feel what we feel.

As you are working on ideas, you are in a bubble, working on your images. What's important to me in my work, I like this idea of communicating through a piece of art so works don't have to be exchanged. They're okay and they're helpful but most importantly that the image will convey something in my mind that I was trying to communicate and then you have that connection.

Art is something that opens up and enhances your emotions and that's what I like to think I'm doing.

Though 'Fire and Rain' is very personal, for other people it resonates as a sort of commonly held experience... And that's what happens with me. I write things for personal reasons, and then in some cases it... can be a shared experience.

I'm the type of artist who touches people, that's the type of artist that I am.

If you're a painter, you're not alone. There's no way to be alone.

I just want to make art that connects with people and moves them on an emotional level. Any time I can put out music and place a story behind it and have people watch it and go, 'Wow, I was affected by that,' to me, feels like I've done my job.

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

All art to me is an empathetic act. Whoever's telling a story is trying to transfer emotion into someone else.

It's good for art to make us think, to give us a shared experience that creates a dialogue, makes us talk to each other, including strangers.

Art is essentially communication. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. That's why people make art, so other people can relate to it.

I am very conscious of the viewer because that's where the art takes place. My work really strives to put the viewer in a certain kind of emotional state.

I have no interest in making a work that doesn't elicit a feeling.

Above all, I try to create an emotion to which others can respond.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

Created stuff is meant to be shared. That’s why the creative person created it. Why else do creative people exist?

That's what's amazing about songwriting: you can write a story that everyone connects to.

Sometimes the music will tell you where to go. And when you find that place I believe is when you're just connecting to the feelings and the heart and the people you're with.

I want the poem to be an experience - for both the listener and for myself.

I don't know how it is for people who write fiction or literature, but for me, when I'm writing music, especially with this album, I felt compelled to hold up my end of the conversation. I want people to connect deeper with it.

I make art primarily for myself and to show my friends, so I guess it's important to make art that they can connect to.

Music is something that is supposed to connect people on a pure level.