Creative Depth Quotes

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

You can go to the moon or walk under the sea, or anything else you like, but painting remains painting because it eludes such investigation. It remains there like a question. And it alone gives the answer.

I am an artist, and I have a lot more to offer than just being a one-dimensional character, and I think our audience sees that and understands that - they're behind it.

I've never heard anything Wynton [Marsalis] played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player to me... he's jazzy the same way someone who drives a BMW is sporty.

Technique does not constitute art. Nor is it a vague, fuzzy romantic quality known as ‘beauty,’ remote from the realities of everyday life. It is the depth and intensity of an artist’s experience that are the first importance in art.

poets are privileged to utter more than they can always quite explain, bringing up from the mind's unplumbed depths tokens of the nature of the world we carry within us.

All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation.

Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple.

To be a good designer, you would need to have deep and far-reaching interests outside of the profession.

Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors.

I think there's art, and then there's illustration. Art comes from a deeper place.

You think you're developing and getting better and then you see something you did years ago. Looking at your early work.. sometimes it has a depth that surprises you.

As an artist, you're taking your experiences and placing them into your art. So the more experiences you have, the richer your art and more people can relate to it.

I think it's good if a song has more than one meaning. Maybe that kind of song can reach far more people.

I could write about a pencil if I wanted to. You just take it back deep enough, all the way back to the tree it came from.

I need to get as deep as I can into my own heart to really make people connect and react to the music as passionate as possible.

Oh God, it's such a big world right now for artists. There are as many possibilities as you can have time for, getting your music out there with the internet, and Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, and everything that you have, there is a way to spread the word. To me, the first thing you have to have is substance and content and real depth.

I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down.

When you work on anything, you want to find the range of impulses - which ones get portrayed is another question, but you want to have that complexity and that fullness, even if you're playing a cartoon character.

In a book you can really talk about ideas and themes and characters in a deeper way than you can even on the screen.

There is something wrong with a work of art if it can be understood by a policeman.

...The more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

There is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dissect out. It continues and is always valid.

It's really deep to me. Although it seems to many people that I'm making silly music, I'm really serious.

A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.