Bennie Wallace

I got more publicity for not doing a festival than for doing the festival.

In the field of art, to be able to have lunch with Kirk Varnedoe is thrilling. I met him at Si and Victoria Newhouse’s dinner one night. Barnett Newman’s widow was there. That’s the part of me that’s a fan. Like when I was a kid and went to the Brooklyn Paramount. Well, my interest has expanded, and it’s not just rock-and-roll.

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.

This type of soul, this type of art takes a while to cook. It’s like when my wife cooks for me and I always ask for greens. She never wants to cook the greens because they take three hours to cook.

To this day I’m really not sure if I was playing Ziggy [Stardust] or if Ziggy was exaggerated aspects of my own personality. A fair amount of psychological baggage was undoubtedly coming out through the character. Because I felt awkward and nervous and inadequate with myself, it felt easier to be somebody else.

Creative Arts raise a person to another level of consciousness as if you could imagine life before words.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

Art is constant tension and release. That is where artists live, between the two or at times, submerged in either.

Good art will speak to you if you give it a chance.

I believe that all creative people have more than one passion, more than one creative talent.

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

Make the best of every moment. We’re not evolving. We’re not going anywhere.

Mother’s interest in contemporary American artists emerged during the 1920s.

The conventional notions of art have changed, and a lot of things done today are considered works of art that would have been rejected in the past.