Artistic Core Quotes

Well, I'm an artist to the core. And my objective has always been to use my talents and my skills to elevate humanity through my art.

Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.

Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it's visible? That is a real question.

As I've grown as an artist, I've gotten more and more in touch with my center, and that center is voice and guitar.

Don't all writers have a hidden nerve, call it a secret chamber, something irreducibly theirs, which stirs their prose and makes it tick and turn this way or that, and identifies them, like a signature, though it lurks far deeper than their style, or their voice or other telltale antics?

I think that if you have a strong narrative, if the idea of the song can be boiled down to the basics, it won't change that much.

Ephemeral work made outside, for and about a day, lies at the core of my art and its making must be kept private.

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that's the center of it, that is it. It's almost like there's something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you're a songwriter that sings your material.

That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life - conducting, playing piano, and so on - what is fundamental is my being a composer.