A Quote by Vic Mensa

Oftentimes I feel like I can, through the music, paint a picture of something that I can't look anywhere and see in my real life. — © Vic Mensa
Oftentimes I feel like I can, through the music, paint a picture of something that I can't look anywhere and see in my real life.
The reason for my painting large canvases is that I want to be intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command.
When I first got into the music scene, I was inspired by different songwriters. I like to dress from the '50s and '60s. I like to paint a picture of that era through my music and clothes. I am inspired by a whole a lot of things, from doo-wop to gospel and soul music.
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.
I will be so glad to take the picture and pose and look good for the picture. But when you catch me while I'm looking real sideways and the picture's ugly as hell, I don't want you to have the picture like that!
If I see something in somebody, if it's something similar in my shot, I feel like it's the same type of thing in life. People who tell you what to do all the time or have all the answers for you, it's like, 'OK, whatever.' But if you've gone through something in life, you can speak to something a little more.
What I love about music, when you can look at something and be like, "Wow, what's this all about?" You can't really picture what these people look like - is it one guy, or a band making music in a garage?
I take pride in my music, I feel like it actually does something for people personally, in their personal lives, so it's real music and it helps people get through things like I was able to get through things.
The narrative oftentimes is that everything that comes out of the hood is 'real,' and so I thought, 'I'll base it on the absurd, the not real. I'll twist the idea of real on its head and see if I can get away with it. I'll make paintings that come not from a place but through an abstract gaze.'
I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.
Don't you see yourself in every picture you love? You feel a radiance wash through you. It's something you can't analyze or speak about clearly. What are you doing at that moment? You're looking at a picture on a wall. That's all. But it makes you feel alive in the world. It tells you yes, you're here. And yes, you have a range of being that's deeper and sweeter than you knew.
I can’t see through clothes or anything. Just glamour skin. Except I can see through all of you, since your clothes aren’t real.” I stopped, horrified. “I mean, I don’t look—It’s hard to see you, and I like looking at your real face, but I don’t try to see anything, because—Oh gosh, this sounds terrible.” He had a funny look on his face, like he wasn’t sure what to think. “Huh. That’s never been an issue before. Maybe next time you could bring me some shorts.
Something very ugly to you as a person can look beautiful through the viewfinder, but being able to find that beauty, oftentimes, means seeing the humanity within the frame. If you turn that off completely, you don't see at all.
In chaotic situations, I feel like I can take a breath and look around and assess the situation and see the big picture. Going through the traumatic time that I did in my life, that's also given me even more of a breather in life to just be like, "I know everything's going to be fine. Even if this is the worst show in the world, no matter what happens, everything's going to be fine." It's an accumulation of things.
I'll look through 'Us Weekly' and I'll see a picture of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston. And I'm like, 'Wow, they just... they look so good. Even if they're like just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, they still look great.'
I do feel like no matter what you're doing, whether it's music or writing a play or a poem or drawing a picture or painting something, that you're speaking to what is it you want to express, what is it you want to see.
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