We Need Your Art Quotes

“When I ask you to stop making innovative art and start making vulnerable art, I am asking you to stop trying to make something new and start making something you. Your worldview, your emotions, your pain, your joy, your relationships, your noticings, your culture, your heritage, your ancestry, your fears, your desires, your trauma, your love. Your truth.”
― Amie McNee, We Need Your Art: Stop Messing Around and Make Something

“It takes tremendous courage to alchemize parts of our internal world into something external and tangible.”
― Amie McNee, We Need Your Art

“Art is a process. It is something we do because of the journey itself. Not because of where we end up. (...) The point of art is the doing of it.”
― Amie McNee, We Need Your Art: Stop Messing Around and Make Something

“When you gift art to the world, you are giving the world a mirror. People will see themselves and discover things about themselves in your art. But it has nothing to do with you, not really. The moment you surrender your crea-tion to the world, you are surrendering, full stop. However people interpret the art or the artist is not your responsibility anymore. It has nothing to do with you anymore.”
― Amie McNee, We Need Your Art: Stop Messing Around and Make Something

“WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT THAT IN ORDER TO CREATE STUFF, WE NEED PERMISSION Even now, as successful as I’ve ever been, I can’t shake that little voice that tells me I am nothing without external permission, that I need to be picked and chosen to do something as audacious as making things that weren’t there before. This impulse to wait for permission is built into our entire culture. In offices and factories and shops, we nearly always have a superior we defer to for permission. As children we needed parental approval. In our schools we had teachers. So it’s not surprising that in our creative life, many of us want someone to tell us that, yes, we are valid, yes, we are allowed. Whether the permission is patronage from the rich, validation from a partner, being offered a contract from a publishing house, or being plucked from obscurity by a casting agent, we consciously or subconsciously believe that if we’re meant to do this, someone with authority will let us know. It also makes sense on a more personal and emotional level that we wait for permission to create because it takes tremendous courage to alchemise parts of our internal world into something external and tangible. Of course we’d feel a little better about making art if someone had told us we were allowed to. It’s hard to pick yourself. It’s vulnerable, scary, we haven’t been taught how. In fact, we have been actively discouraged by the systems we live in. That’s why we have so many artists waiting in the wings, waiting to create but never starting, waiting for life to begin. You need to learn to pick yourself first or else you will always be waiting.”
― Amie McNee, We Need Your Art: Stop F*cking Around and Make Something

“The researchers found just that: Art engages the social brain. Art awakens our ability to connect. The researchers saw that ‘art engagement recruits the same brain networks as complex social behavior’.”
― Amie McNee, We Need Your Art: Stop F*cking Around and Make Something

“Enjoying art with other people is extremely positive for our mental health.”
― Amie McNee, We Need Your Art: Stop F*cking Around and Make Something

“Another unexpected but the delightful byproduct of self coronation is magnetism. When you pick yourself up, people are going to be interested in you. Ironic, no? But it makes sense.”
― Amie McNee, We Need Your Art: Stop F--king Around and Make Something