It's a different era. Our job now is to show leadership and vision and to help the next generation of artists.

What I look for when I see a piece of art for the first time is some kind of emotional intellectual experience that's a combination of both of those things and is informed by my knowledge and something new that I see the artist doing.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti had a tremendous education as an artist and also an enormous knowledge of literarture.

I'm quite ignorant about fashion and I'm colourblind so it's all a tad tricky. My only knowledge of that world comes through Christopher Bailey whom I first met in 2008 when I did a campaign for Burberry that featured musicians artists actors and sportsmen.

All of them had so much to offer us as far as you know knowledge in the music industry and especially Randy and Paula because you know they've been artists.

The intercourse between the Mediterranean and the North or between the Atlantic and Central Europe was never purely economic or political it also meant the exchange of knowledge and ideas and the influence of social institutions and artistic and literary forms.

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.

My tastes and inspirational artists were always rather eclectic and diverse.

I love a lot of the New York bands but Patti Smith stands out. I just read 'Just Kids' and it's an inspirational well-written account of an emerging New York artist in the late seventies.

I am very conscious of who I am as an artist and as an inspirational person.

I will always desire to play with Bruce Springsteen. He's the most inspirational most dedicated most committed and most focused artist I've ever seen. I like to be around people like that.

The product of the scientific imagination is a new vision of relations - like that of artistic imagination.

There's not one major greatest influence on my career. It would be film and great artists and great imagineers - Jim Henson Walt Disney Charlie Chaplin people who understand the joy of the imagination.

The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.

For some reason I can't explain artist and musicians tend to look younger than our age. Being in music you need this youthful sense of discovery and wonder for what you're doing and keep your imagination open. That's a youthful way of looking at life and I think that reflects in how you age.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

I hope that I'm sexy in a different kind of way than I think that a lot of girls are right now. I think a lot of girls in the public eye especially musical artists are just kind of objectified a little bit and wearing super-skimpy outfits and leaving nothing to the imagination.