Raymond Pettibon Quotes

Back in the '80s, a lot of the images I used were from TV or from films on TV.

Most writers do similar things in their minds. It's how the mind works, basically.

I'm not God, but I'm working within my own means as an artist and a person, and I possibly have more power than God does, in whatever form he has, if he exists, because I can work without the overarching ambition of wanting to rule over everything. I can work just for the heck of it.

It's inevitable that everyone's first drawing they draw is much like their fingerprint. It's inescapable that one has an identifiable style. It's not a major issue with me, but I never wanted to have a distinctive signature style so much.

It was never my goal to capitalize on punk. I could never make it as a commercial artist. I didn't back then and I still don't have the temperament and don't care for drawing or painting or making art for any other purposes other my own.

I don't feel that I decided deliberately I'm going to write something and have it stand alone. Somewhere by the end I think it would probably revert to imagery.

I wouldn't want to be defined so much by comics or cartoons. My work is more narrative than that. If you take your basic cartoon, there's always a punchline or a joke at the end. My drawings don't depend on that so much.

I don't have extravagant tastes or expenses - like with cars, clothes, or whatever.

Anyone living, especially your peers, is a threat. You're judging them, they're judging you. This sort of criticism is as close to human nature as you can get. That can be a good thing sometimes. Jealously, rancor, competition, those can be good things in art. But it mostly puts you in a dangerous and disadvantageous position, and one that just takes away from you so much.

Forgiveness is the nature of my art in general. It's expressing love and compassion, the kinds of things that don't make sense in any other context other than emotive expression.

There are lots of guns and action in my drawings, and part of that is just to make them more interesting. Because you can go through a whole film and it's mostly talking heads and little else until the action scenes, and they're usually violence or physical stuff. Same with baseball, or any sport. Except I find pitching and batting are visually very striking.

If you don't use an image now you might have a place to put it in further down the line - and I have a lot of unfinished drawings.

When I see a train, I want to take it in my arms.

I don't drive often, because the parking makes it too much of a nuisance. And I could never go back to commuting or anything. I'd just get fed up with it.

Art can be a kind of therapeutic, or kind of a fantasy life, or wish fulfillment ... o r creating this alternate universe. Art gives me the freedom to do that.

Orgasm coincides with a general hardening of the arteries.

I don't know if it's good to be stuck at one place. I'm probably too close to home on that. Because that can happen-where I'm not the best judge of my own work.

I was making my work as transparent as possible, without equivocations, without calling attention to itself, without apology. There's a lot of conventions in the art world that are not to be transgressed, but my economy of means doesn't abide by those strictures. There's no reason to abide by them. I don't have any vested interest in it.

There are instances where lines in my work are borrowed or stolen from sources, mainly from books, or they become my own versions. A lot of the writing is my own, too. But if someone were to take each drawing and trace it back to its source, most of them could be traced back to a book or a text.

It's an extreme to go from an artist like myself to a commercial artist with art directors looking over your shoulder, or any other knucklehead telling you what your art should look like.

I don't make art with grandiose delusions. I do know there are limits to what art is capable of. That makes it all the more appealing to me. And I can do as I will whenever I choose.

I don't want to express violence or anger or hate in my art. I want to express forgiveness.

I really don't see any influence of my work on any artists. But I do think I've had an influence on drawings' being shown. I've had an influence on the economics of it.

Anyway, the way political history is passed down is influenced and spoiled by the closeness of the writers to the political figures that they're writing about. It's a sad state of affairs, but there's probably more veracity of reporting in my work than there is in the newspapers.

My work is more driven by the creative word. It's immersed in other writing and printed work, rather than drawn so much from life or past experience.