It's easy to see how Marissa Nadler's experience as a songwriter is informed by her extensive experience as a visual artist. She studied illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she received both her undergraduate and graduate degree. In fact, she started as a visual artist before becoming a songwriter. The intensity and honesty she exhibits as a visual artist manifest themselves in her songwriting, as you'll read, though poetry also influences how she writes. Songwriting and illustration, she says, is about "trying to find the beauty or ugliness" in a subject, using the artist's ability to approach that subject from a unique point of view. It's also about "compressing life into a couple of lines," as a good poet does.
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