A Quote by Tracy Chapman
I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.
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I don't want to try to live up to someone who's created something so incredible. I'm just trying to focus on what I'm doing and what I do best. It's sometimes hard to focus in and only think about my books rather than how they measure up to someone else's.
The pressure is all self-imposed, and it's to live up to the expectations of people who are going to shell out their hard-earned cash to listen to the music. It's actually more than that, though. I wouldn't want to make a record that didn't live up to my expectations.
Anytime we're interacting with someone, we're judging them, we're sharing expectations, we think they didn't live up to those expectations.
When a lot of things are going the wrong way for a country, for a people, when you can't really think of anything worse than a war, you always try to take life on the brighter side and that's how I grew up with my parents.
One possible sign of low self-esteem is suppressing parts of yourself so you can fill someone else's expectations of what you should be. You try to fill someone else's (or your own) prescription of perfection, instead of being yourself and embracing your originality.
Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don't think art is elite or mysterious.
I don't think geometric art is... I don't like to call it that. I don't think it's any more pure than pop art or anything else. It doesn't have anything to do with purity.
One of the things that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people's expectations. You should live your own life and live up to your own expectations, and those are the only things I really care about it.
When I started thinking about plans to avenge [my father], I realized I was only going to become someone worse than him, someone worse than the person I had so often criticized. I was going against my own principles. And yes, people tell me that it was a tremendous life decision in the span of 10 minutes but I just say, what else was there to think of?
I think that just the nature of art education in schools, it's about packs, you know? Like, we're young wolves running together, creating a consensus. And consensus is antithetical to the art process.
You look around, and you think, 'Given the chance, if we can get away with it, people are going to be nasty to each other. They're going to pull up the draw bridge; they're going to draw up the ladder and try to live in this little bubble without giving anything to anyone else - without even receiving anything from anyone else.'
Be independent and don't try to think someone is going to save you or look to someone else to make you happy or look to someone else to complete you.
What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch... And it's at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself.
I think that a lot of artists have succeeded in making what I might call "curator's art." Everybody's being accepted, and I always want to say, "Really? That's what you've come for? To make art that looks a lot like somebody else's art?" If I am thinking of somebody else's art in front of your art, that's a problem.
I believe that every human being should try to do good for someone else. There are so many different ways to do it. My art can be an instrument for helping people... What a good feeling - that I can do that with my art.
... I don't think anybody should avoid mistakes. If it is within their nature to make certain mistakes, I think they should make them, make the mistakes and find out what the cost of the mistake is, rather than to constantly keep avoiding it, and never really knowing exactly what the experience of it is, what the cost of it is, you know, and all the other facets of the mistake. I don't think that mistakes are that bad. I think that they should try and not do destructive things, but I don't think that a mistake is that serious a thing that one should be told what to do to avoid it.
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