Art & Creativity Quote by Robyn Hitchcock

There is something quietly defiant in how unremarkable Robyn Hitchcock makes the act of “starting.” After decades of being filed under “cult musician,” he refuses the dramatic reinvention narrative. No epiphany, no crisis, no grand pivot. Just years of painting, then “a lot more” recently. The phrasing shrugs at the idea that creativity needs a press release.

That casualness is the point. Hitchcock’s songs have always treated the surreal as everyday weather; this line does the same for artistic identity. Painting isn’t a new mask he’s trying on, it’s a long-running side current that simply got more oxygen. The subtext is a rebuttal to the way audiences and industries demand a single, legible self: the musician who stays a musician, the brand that stays on message. He’s telling you he’s been more than your category for a while; you just weren’t looking.

Context matters here, too: in the later stretch of a career, “I started doing a lot more” can read like liberation. Older artists often stop auditioning for permission. Touring slows, the machinery of releases changes, and the private practice becomes public-facing. Hitchcock frames that shift not as decline but as redistribution of attention.

Even the unfinished “last couple” (years? months?) feels honest: time is blurry when you’re making things, and precision isn’t the emotional truth. The intent is to normalize creative drift, to make multiplication - not reinvention - the story.