A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In my early 20s, connecting with fiction was a difficult process. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to what was meaningful, what convinced, and what made sense.
I was influenced by surrealist poetry and painting as were thousands of other people, and it seems to me to have become a part of the way I write, but it's not.
I believe that art has been a vehicle for me that's been about enlightenment and expanding my own parameters, to give me courage to exercise the freedom that I have in life.
While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality... true art lies in a reality that is felt.
There have been many different artists that have been inspirational. I suppose the question is directed to what was the reason why I went into fantasy illustration.
I believe in a kind of fidelity to your own early ideas; it's a kind of antagonism in me to prevailing fads.
To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction.
I have always had a mystical attitude toward inspiration. That's my nature.
For a long time, I believed that a great piece of music on its own could do more to stir the soul than any other single art form.
When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that found its first expression through reading. I really dislike the romantic notion of the artist.