Wayne White Quotes

Sheer obstinacy is very very important for anybody who wants to create.

Artists are people who create beauty. That's the bottom line.

It would be really embarrassing to introduce yourself as somebody who makes beauty.

I've been very lucky. I've had three separate careers: freelance illustrator, then set designer, puppetteer and animator, and now fine artist. I just bluffed my way into every one of 'em!

It's about communication, no matter how impossibly hard your art is to understand and how much of an ivory tower or high horse you get on, it's still basically communication or why are you doing it?

Puppets are pure form then ideas for performance come out of that. It's always the form and the visuals and that's why I like to make puppets in a gallery or museum. They're not often in those contexts.

I don't like the idea of busing children all over the country. It's not safe. And there doesn't seem to be that much of an urgent need for it to be done.

I had to learn to do stuff only for myself, and stop thinking about pleasing some imaginary client or boss. It's a habit that many artists get into that have worked in commercial ventures.

People that are born beautiful like supermodels act like entitled a**holes. It makes you embarrassed just to see 'em. They handle beauty embarrassingly.

I throw dignity out the window, and just become a creature of the moment on the stage. I act like I'd never act in real life.

I'm thankful for the big stuff of course-my family, health, human kindness. But I'm also thankful that I don't have to work for Hollywood anymore.

I can't help it. I always focus in on the negative.

I have some sort of performing gene that's just there and I cannot explain it but I want to connect with people through a camera or on a stage. I just can do it. I just have an intuitive sense of it. So I love doing that, I love going into that trance.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no line between high art and pop art, and there should be no line.

But nobody predicted anything of this magnitude in terms of resistance. And in part, the magnitude of the resistance was spurred by our failures in reconstruction.

I become exaggerated, and loud, and obnoxious, and full of the spirit of improvisation. That's one of the weird things about performing, I think that any performer will say the same thing when you're on stage in front of a crowd there's a certain moment when you kind of click into a trance-like state and you just kind of go with it. I love getting into that mode. It's transcendental.

Making art is nothing but risk, always. If it's not risk, it's no good.

I'm a sign painter with no boss.

I want to communicate. I do; every artist does. That's why you're an artist.

You're free because you don't have to expose yourself, and you can go wild, and let your id completely out of its box, and nobody will see you because you're operating through a surrogate. It's an opportunity to crack open your shell, to melt down yourself, and just let yourself go. It's a form of catharsis for me.

I'm a perfectionist I guess. Everyone has to love me.

When I perform I'm very extroverted and I wear my heart on my sleeve and some people don't like that. They're embarrassed for me.

First of all I think of puppets as sculpture. They are sculpture that moves. You could label it any way you want, but for me it always starts in my mind as a sculpture.

When we see something beautiful it calls up raw, naked emotion and that's an embarrassing situation to be in.

I am very suspicious of cameras and dramatic interpretations and the whole Hollywood myth-making process. I don't trust it. I've seen it affect people in bad ways.

Some of these bulls are gonna' spin those cowboys so fast, they'll look like a frog in a blender.

Static puppets, I wanted them to move, they're looking out the windows, but we didn't have time to rig those. I have more ideas than I can execute also every time that I do anything. I put the puppets in because people love 'em. I'm a populist in that sense.

I'm neurotic in the sense that I can have a crowd of 300 people cheering you, applauding you, standing O, but one guy come out of the audience and go, "Hey man, you should have cut 20 minutes. That wasn't so good." And I'll just obsess on that one guy. After all this love, I'll obsess on him and want to smash his face in and strangle him and kick him down the stairs and I'll be pouting about that one guy all night.

Puppets allow a person to express things through this surrogate that wouldn't normally get expressed. You know there's famous techniques of puppet therapists. Put this hand puppet on and tell me what the problem is.

I'm just a mule with blinders on, I can't help myself.

I would advise puppeteering for any artist. It's a way to break down pretensions. It's a sculpture that can talk. It's a painting that can talk. And it's pure play. I think every artist needs to stay in touch with the idea of playing. The artist should always be playing, always. All art is performance.

I hate people who act too cool for school. Just own up to it, dude.

If they make the deadline because the Shiites and Kurds essentially rammed a draft through over Sunni Arab objections, there will be hell to pay.

I've been around Hollywood and filmmaking long enough to know that it's a tricky dangerous business when you go on camera, you got to watch yourself.

Do what you love. It’s going to lead to where you want to go.

Exposing something that's painful or raw or not so pleasant. That seems to be the dramatic motor of documentaries, exposure.

Follow your heart, and your pleasure in art. Don’t do what you think is going to be making you money, or what you’re parents want you to do, or what that beautiful girl or guy thinks you should be doing. Do what you love. It’s going to lead to where you want to go. Go out there and make the world more beautiful. I know you can.

But I think frustration is hilarious. One of my missions is to bring humor into fine art. It's sacred.

Once the cameras rolling or the audience is in the seats, I'm on. I can't help it. I go into a trance.

All I'm really concerned with is doing my thing.

When I commit to working with an artist, I give them as much respect as I would like and if I'm not going to commit that way, then I don't want to work with you.

I want to reach out and entertain people. I want people to come to a museum that have never been in a museum before. I want also to have enough art references in it that would satisfy the most sophisticated museum goer.

I wanted to deconstruct the puppet show. I wanted to turn it inside out and do stuff that you're not supposed to do. I didn't want it to be gentle like most puppet shows tend to be, since they come from childhood where you're gently trying to tell a story. I wanted to blast all that out of the water. I think there's plenty of room of any kind of attitude toward puppets. I call puppeteering acting while hiding.

Art should be as inclusive as possible. That's why I like bringing the low form of puppetry and elevating it into a sculpture form, but it's still a puppet also.

I practice the artist's golden rule. I wouldn't want somebody telling me how to finish my painting, I'm not going to tell him how to finish his movie or how to shape his movie.

I'm probably the worst person in the world to give advice to puppeteers. My whole attitude towards puppets from the beginning was not one of love, but it was like anti-puppetry.

I hate the whole group of artists who are so hermetic and completely indecipherable on some level and they're all proud of themselves for it. It's like, how obnoxious, how pretentious. And that's part of my mission as an artist is to kick down those people or make fun of that type of high horse attitude.

All I do is work, that's all my life is work.