Theaster Gates Quotes

Designis a revelation to me. It's like taking something that is not alive and giving it form, shape, substance, and life.

A playwright can drop a little acid in the water and it washes away a lot of rust.

Art is about building a new foundation, not just laying something on top of what's already there.

Artists love to immerse themselves in chaos in order to put it into form, just as God created form out of chaos in Genesis. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always push on to newer worlds.

I love the creative process and being able to build something out of nothing.

Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

Like all artists, I go through creative spurts.

I'm into designing houses and interior design. I like change. I like creating things out of nothing.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.

I enjoy trying to inspire myself. I enjoy the artistic side of everything. Music, art, fashion, everything. I just like to be on the cutting edge of it. I'm into designing houses and interior design. I like change. I like creating things out of nothing.

I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.

A day doesn't go by where I don't create something.

Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics.

I like to create.

Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

What makes our world so fascinating is that continuously there are novel and creative ideas spurring people to leave old ways and try something new.

I think that art has the ability to capture people's imaginations and make them think that more is possible.

Art is transformative. It's not 2+2=4. It works like the sea. It changes geography through its constant and relentless movement, just the way plants and water shape the world.

I wasn't in the art world at all as a kid; I was just creative, and we were always doing arts and crafts.

As an artist, you find at different times you want to do different things.

There's this feeling of creativity in Iceland.