Art Quote by Buffy Sainte-Marie

Buffy Sainte-Marie’s line works because it refuses the most lucrative myth in contemporary culture: that new tools automatically produce new kinds of people. “Very much the same” is an unflashy phrase, almost stubborn in its plainness, and that’s the point. It pushes back on the techno-awe that treats digital art as either suspiciously artificial or magically revolutionary. Sainte-Marie isn’t romanticizing tradition; she’s defending continuity.

The intent feels twofold. First, it legitimizes digital practice by relocating value where artists have always claimed it lives: in choices, not equipment. Composition, color, rhythm, revision, doubt, obsession - the invisible labor that makes a finished image feel inevitable - doesn’t vanish when the brush becomes a stylus. Second, it quietly challenges the gatekeeping that polices “real” art through materials. If the process is comparable, then dismissing the result as less authentic starts to look like anxiety disguised as criticism.

Context matters: Sainte-Marie has long been associated with innovation across mediums, and as an Indigenous artist and activist, she’s familiar with institutions deciding what counts. Read that way, the quote is also about authority: who gets to define craft, and who gets written off as a novelty. Digital art, like marginalized voices, is often treated as an exception that must justify itself.

The subtext is almost punk: stop fetishizing the tool. Judge the work. The future doesn’t need permission from the past, but it also doesn’t need to pretend it sprang from nowhere.