Artists have a sensibility that others don't have. They have a way of reading into the future.

there’s a lot of different art we could be making to help people see their way into the future.

When you're an artist, you pick up on certain things that are in the air. You just feel it. It's not like you're sitting down, thinking, "What can I do to really mess things up?" You're getting ideas, and then the ideas feed into a story, and the story takes shape. And if you're honest about it and you're thinking about characters and what they do, you now see that your ideas are about trouble. You're feeling more depth, and you're describing something that is going on in some way.

Artists are visionaries. We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance - often visible to us, but invisible to those around us.

Now more than ever, we must look to our artists to be our truthtellers and to challenge us toward creative solutions to the many problems mankind faces.

If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life,
it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This
isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has
come.
In this great unfolding, ideas and thoughts, themes and songs and other
works of art exist in the aether and ripen on schedule, ready to find
expression in the physical world.
As artists, it is our job to draw down this information, transmute it, and
share it. We are all translators for messages the universe is broadcasting.
The best artists tend to be the ones with the most sensitive antennae to draw
in the energy resonating at a particular moment. Many great artists first
develop sensitive antennae not to create art but to protect themselves. They
have to protect themselves because everything hurts more. They feel
everything more deeply.

In a way, artists are messengers between worlds, bringing ideas and symbols from one to the other.

it is always in the future that the course of art lies

A lot of art today doesn't convey much hope, and I hope mine does. I try to paint what I think the future holds and my innermost feelings about God's promise for the future.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

It is an artist's duty to reflect the times.

I am a Chicago artist because I am from this city; I'm a Black artist because I happen to be Black. These descriptions are sometimes useful to other people. But I'm also many other things—a man, a human being, an artist. Artists have a unique opportunity to make a difference . . . to look and work toward the future. Most people, by the nature of their work, have to think about what's happening now, to serve as kind of custodians of our culture; but artists have the opportunity and responsibility to be forward-looking. We have the job of creating new ideas and visions for the future, and I'm pleased to be a part of that.

Art has always been a powerful portal to understanding how we feel about our world. Let’s hope it helps safeguard our climatic future.

Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, 'the aesthetic event'.