I am not sure if this is the reference you were looking for but I found a couple of references about artists and criminals in this article.. "What makes one person choose painting and another robbery? A controversial theory suggests that artists and criminals have a lot in common: they both break the rules"

Oscar Wilde – 'no essential incongruity between crime and culture'.

Painter Maggi Hambling – 'artists and criminals have a lot in common'. Both, she claimed, express a primal rage. Love, hate, fury, despair and passion can be given utterance with brushes and pens, or with guns and knives.

There are a few more quotes in the article...

contractors are criminals.

william wordsworth (based on google)...i've browsed through my 'cynic's lexicon' book and found something close but i lost the page...gonna hit up my george carlin trilogy, but that could take some time...

stanley kubrik:

"I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists--neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are."

some clients and all contractors are tragic criminals

david carson:

“The criminal, like the artist, is a social explorer.”

punky...you got something there...

the difficult part is navigating through irrelevant stuff...

found this...

"every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers"...mignon mclaughlin

"society is produced by our wants and government by its wickedness"-thomas paine...

"society prepares crimes; criminals are only the instruments neccessary for executing them"-l.a.j. quetelet

this idea goes back to the romantics and has been said in one way or another by many people. it based on the premise that artists and criminals are the ones that challenge and rebel against a strict social structure that no longer exists (at least not in the west) but remember to live outside the law, you must be honest.

Im thinking Kubrik is what I was thinking of, but Im sure this idea has been around along time. All these are good :) thanks guys.