Stevie Nicks Revealed the Hobby That’s ‘as Important’ to Her as Songwriting

Stevie Nicks’ songwriting practice has been vitally important to her for much of her life. She began writing as a way to lessen the sting of her first heartbreak and has made a decades-long career out of the art form. Nicks loves writing music, but she said another artistic practice is just as important to her.

Stevie Nicks said she values painting as much as songwriting

Nicks has followed a busy touring schedule in recent years. She said she’s glad the tour has ended, as she finally has time for her creative practices.

“I haven’t been able to do a lot of the creative things that I love in many, many years,’ she told Rolling Stone. “I draw, I write songs, and I write poetry.”

Though she hasn’t drawn in some time, the practice is still important to her.

“I haven’t drawn in years,” she said, “but my drawings are as important to me as my songs.”

She hopes to share her art with the public soon.

“I’m really proud of all the stuff that I’ve done,” she said. “My drawings are very precious to me. I will, maybe next year, do a big art show.”

She wants to spend more time drawing

Recently, Nicks began to notice problems with her vision.

“I got diagnosed with this thing a year and a half ago called wet macular degeneration, and it is not a good thing,” she said, adding, “I was seeing all these colors, big things of purple. I was having, like, acid trips. And I’m going, ‘I’m not taking any acid, so I don’t understand what this is.’ Now, every six, seven, eight, nine weeks, I have to have a shot in each one of my eyes. That’s going to be for the rest of my life.”

She said that the diagnosis has made her want to rededicate herself to her artwork while she still can.

“So when I got diagnosed with this, all of a sudden, I’m going like, ‘You know what? You need to finish these drawings, because what if you start to lose your sight?’”

Stevie Nicks recalled her first experience with songwriting

When Nicks was in high school, her boyfriend ended their relationship and began dating her friend. 

“I had fallen for this incredible guy, and he ended up going out with my best friend,” she said, per the book Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis. “And they both knew that I was going to be crushed.”

She had always loved music but, for the first time, she turned to songwriting as a way to deal with her emotions.

“I was totally in tears, sitting on my bed with lots of paper, my guitar, and a pen, and I wrote this song about your basic sixteen-year-old love affair thing that I was now going through.”

Though she still felt devastated by the breakup, she had discovered a new love in her life.

“I finished that song, hysterically crying. And I was hooked,” she said. “When I played my own song later that night, I knew — from that second on — that I was not going to sing a lot of other people’s songs. I was going to write my own. From that day forward, when I was in my room playing my guitar, nobody would come in without knocking, nobody disturbed me.”