Art Quote by Buffy Sainte-Marie

There is a quiet defiance in that opening clause: "As a teenager". Buffy Sainte-Marie is pointing to the moment before credentials, before institutions, before the world decides what you are allowed to be. The line isn’t dressed up as destiny; it’s almost stubbornly plain. That plainness is the strategy. It suggests creativity not as a rare gift but as a lived practice you start when you’re young, when the stakes are both low (no one’s paying attention yet) and enormous (you’re building the person you’ll become).

Pairing "painting" with "playing guitar" matters. One is solitary and visual, the other public-facing and performed; together they frame art as a full-body education. Sainte-Marie’s career would later braid mediums and messages: music as activism, image-making as identity work, storytelling as survival. This early split between canvas and strings hints at a lifelong refusal to stay in one lane, a refusal that resonates with Indigenous artists who’ve had to be polymaths just to be heard.

The subtext is also about access and self-invention. Teenagers often create with whatever is available, not what is sanctioned. For Sainte-Marie, coming of age in mid-century North America, picking up a guitar is not just a hobby; it’s an entry point into a culture industry that historically exoticized or excluded Indigenous voices. "I started" places agency at the center. It’s a small sentence that quietly insists: the origin story isn’t mythic. It’s chosen.