A Quote by Dan Colen

I try very hard to handle things equally: ideas, materials, and images. — © Dan Colen
I try very hard to handle things equally: ideas, materials, and images.
I don't really think about what's 'age appropriate' for my audience because I think they can handle quite a bit, but I do try to think about what's honest and true to my characters who have grown up in situations where they've been taught to handle these things very carefully and that they're very powerful.
Things which are equally bad are also equally good. Try to look at the bright side of things. - Humbug
I want my images to achieve two things in this regard - to be an elegy to a world that is tragically vanishing, to make people see what beauty is disappearing. Also, to try and show that animals are sentient creatures equally as worthy of life as humans.
Images exist; things themselves are images... Images constantly act on and react to one another, produce and consume. There is no difference between images, things and movement.
I got tired of books where the boy is a bit thick and the girl's very clever. Why does it have to such an opposition? Why can't they be like the girls and boys that I know personally, who are equally funny and equally cross? Who get things equally wrong and are equally brave? And make the same mistakes?
The idea that we should be open to all ideas is very different from the supposition that all ideas are equally valid.
The ideas of non-duality and mindfulness that I address in my works are things I try to practice in my daily life. Both in and outside of the studio, it's about trying to be fully present, to accept things as they are, to frame your experience in terms of a continually unfolding moment. I feel like that's directly reflected in my formal approach: utilizing a literal use of materials, emphasizing the more ephemeral aspects of the artistic process, and so on.
Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people`s plates.
I am myself a professional creator of images, a film-maker. And then there are the images made by the artists I collect, and I have noticed that the images I create are not so very different from theirs. Such images seem to suggest how I feel about being here, on this planet. And maybe that is why it is so exciting to live with images created by other people, images that either conflict with one's own or demonstrate similarities to them.
Work hard and do it right. Very simple; but very effective. They are morals I got from my mum and dad. And within that are the details. Be respectful. Try and smile, try and enjoy it. They are things that I still value.
I don't know whether we think in moving images or whether we think in still images. I have a suspicion that on our hard drive, our series within our brains, [exist] still photographs of very important moments in our lives. ... That we think in terms of still images and that what the photography is doing is making direct contact with the human hard drive and recording for all time a sense of what happened.
I believe equality in a relationship is very important, and for that, both partners should be equally capable to handle anything.
I look at comic books, and I do very eclectic mood boards with ideas and images that have to do with a character or story point. It's a bit like spinning plates. You gradually just steal your ideas.
...the worry over media manipulation of photographs pales beside the threat that we will be exposed to an unedited, unvetted picture world where all images seem equally important and equally trivial.
It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers and the creators. They are the magic people of the world.
I've been compiling a list of art project ideas for a long time. These are ideas of things I would love to see someday. They range from the practical - jackets with woodstoves in them - to the sublime - images of nuns on waterslides.
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