Artistic Mentorship Quotes

When I hear him sing and see what he can do, though, it's always a reminder of why I look up to Usher as my mentor and why I will always be an Usher fan to my core. But I'm lucky to say that he's an even better friend to me than he's a mentor. He's truly the real deal.

A great editor is the most valuable thing you can have as an artist because, as you said, sometimes you get too close to something. I think, apart from your talent, that's why you have the career you have - because you have great people behind you.

One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, 'This end is more important than the other.' After twenty years I learned to write directly in ink.

I met and became close with John Szarkowski of the Museum of Modern Art. He was incredibly supportive about me working in color.

I want to dip my foot in some acting. And most definitely want to mentor upcoming artists and give them the wisdom that was given to me.

Unfortunately, young Russian artists are in a difficult position today. Painting, like all other arts, rests on a continuity of experience. More than anything, young painters and sculptors need to know the works of their immediate elders. Such a continuity does not exist here to a sufficient degree in the visual arts.

Imagine it's 1981. You're an artist, in love with art, smitten with art history. You're also a woman, with almost no mentors to look to; art history just isn't that into you. Any woman approaching art history in the early eighties was attempting to enter an almost foreign country, a restricted and exclusionary domain that spoke a private language.

A young man, just beginning the study of musical composition, once went to Mozart and asked him the formula for developing the theme of a symphony. Mozart suggested that a symphony was rather an ambitious project for a beginner: perhaps the young man might better try his hand at something simpler first. "But you were writing symphonies when you were my age." the student protested. "Yes, but I didn't have to ask how."

My father was a professional artist all his life who encouraged my path as an artist.

I teach film directing, inasmuch as you can. It's not really possible to teach film direction, but I sit there as a sort of testimony of experience and know-how, I suppose.

Just because I'm a younger artist doesn't mean I can't work with a veteran and vice versa.

I refused [to study under Rodin] because nothing grows under large trees.

I definitely have been very mindful of what kind of leader and creator I want to be. A lot of that has to with looking at the writers that you work with. They're all like your children. They all need love, but different versions of it.

I founded my label last November called Icy, and once my foundation is laid, I'd love to go back and help other artists and give them the opportunity that I wasn't given at a younger age.

There's nothing shocking inherently about that, given that so much of the way that artists are taught is by copying old master paintings.

I had an amazing instructor, Joseph Gotto , who, as a painter, spoke to me as it - he didn't condescend.

Joe Mantello is the uber director. I wrote him a card tonight saying basically, 'Will you adopt me?'

Miranda [Hentoff] is a complete musician. She's a composer, a singer. She writes scripts along - with her projects. And she's a superb teacher. Her teaching pupils have ranged from Itzhak Perlman to Sting.

I was raised by this whole community of artists. It was pretty wild.

I always want to encourage young artists. As the budgets get smaller, that might provide an opening for younger artists and more experimentation. Budgets had gotten quite large for art, as they had for architecture. I'm not going to cut back. The minute someone walks through my door, I go, "That's my thing and you got to let me do it."

He would catapult you forward, and that was his intention with the Jazz Messengers. He would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.

I've tried to help a lot of young artists get started.

I've said it before and can only repeat that I owe everything to Boudin and I attribute my success to him. I came to be fascinated by his studies, the products of what I call instantaneity.

I've always tried to - when I've been able to - support young artists, no matter what medium.

Painters can study the masters can't they? Musicians can hear Beethoven. What will filmmakers do?