Unconventional Artist Quotes

To be an artist of my generation willing to be unhip -artists were supposed to be like cowboys.

When it comes to R&B singers, people think of soft men and technically I am not a soft man, not your typically R&B cat, so with a song like 'Ice Box' I wanted to be the voice for others.

I wasn't Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson. I wasn't Tori Amos or Norah Jones. Nobody knew what to do with me.

An artist should have more than two eyes.

Pollock was well known, certainly, but for all the wrong reasons. He was known as much for being wild and unconventional in his working methods as for being a great artist.

I don't think that I'm a top 40 artist in any way. So I don't think I'm that mainstream.

Jimmy [Dean] was the most talented and original actor I ever saw work. He was also a guerrilla artist who attacked all restrictions on his sensibility. Once he pulled a switchblade and threatened to murder his director. I imitated his style in art and in life. It got me in a lot of trouble.

Amazingly, I've been sort of an anomaly in the music industry. I feel like I've been able to exist as kind of a throwback artist.

Culturally, it's really funny to me that people respect the weird guy as an artist. There can be a curmudgeon in the corner with spiders building nests in his hair, and he hasn't bathed for three weeks, but for whatever reason, he's more creative than the guy sitting next to him that's showered and is talking to everybody.

I do pinch myself, like when shows in non-English speaking countries are sold out, and people are singing my lyrics. I don't think I'll ever lose that; I'm always appreciative every day of the support I have as an artist, because I'm not a commercial artist.

Every morning when I awake, the greatest of joys is mine: that of being Salvador Dali.

Nobody could understand why a guy would love his guitar, then all of a sudden turn around and try to destroy it. Jimi was just different.

I'm a little bit of everything. That's what makes Nicky Jam so different from everybody else.

In art or architecture your project is only done when you say it's done. If you want to rip it apart at the eleventh hour and start all over again, you never finish. I was one of those crazy creatures.

Ismail Merchant was just the most seductive, passionate, outrageous, driven, genius of a man.

They could never put me in a slot. They couldn't say Glen was 'country,' 'pop' or 'rock.' I'm crock, OK? A cross between country and rock. Call me crock.

I made records for 20 years, I lived off it. But people would say I made so many mistakes, I did so many things you're not supposed to do. I had a band name nobody could say. I didn't play live. I never practiced, I never got better at my instrument.

Mozart was a punk, which people seem to forget. He was a naughty, naughty boy.

It would be a dream come true if I could sing for A.R. Rahman. He is very unconventional.

Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of the supreme nut jobs in movie history, and of course I mean that in the nicest way.

Maybe my work looks a little crazy, a little insane, but I don't really see myself as a crazy artist or a shaman artist.

I was rejected by every agent in Australia when I was starting out. No one would represent me, because I didn't fit into a particular box, and I wasn't a trained musician or performer, but history has perhaps proven that perhaps I have something to give.

There is nothing the pop world loves more than a way-out freak.

'Memoryhouse' came out, and there wasn't a single review and zero sales, and after about a year, it was deleted. So I recorded The 'Blue Notebooks' on a little indie label, and my attitude was, 'Well, if nobody is listening, I might as well keep doing what I'm doing'.

Reggie Watts is a most unusual talent: a huge vocal range, a natural musicality, and a sidesplitting wit. Is he a comedian? A singer? A performance artist? I've seen him a few times since then and I still can't decide. Whatever, he ain't like nobody else.