James Turrell Quotes

There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

I always say I make pictures rather than take pictures.

Generally, we use light to illuminate other things. I like the thingness, the materiality of light itself. So it feels like it's occupying the space, making a plane, being something that was there, not just passing through. Because light is just passing through. I make these spaces that seem to arrest it for our perception.

I wanted to deal with light directly rather than with paint.

You don't take a picture, you make a picture.

If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.

Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

People see my photos and think I labor over my image and I'm this cool, brooding artist. But I'm just having fun with it.

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

For me, Picasso was the ultimate man. He taught me that photography is all about how you approach an image: what you do and what you don't do. He inspired me to go beyond what you think is in front of you.

Mostly, I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.

I couldn't go into the haphazard drawing or the paintings, the splashing of paint. I wanted to go back to a completely dry drawing, a dry conception of art.

Ironically, my paintings don't photograph well.

A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.

A photo is a creation.

I always try hard to arrange all media in a way so that it expresses what I want - this is not limited to one medium alone and varies from case to case.

All the important drawings I do myself. Every single character is also done by me.

You don't take a photograph, you make it.

The other great development has been in photography, but that too was influenced by Conceptual art.

I've exhibited quite a few of my photographs. I expand them digitally till they're very big. It's an art school thing, I suppose.

Paintings don't just happen. I am not a proponent of the idea of an artist as someone who kind of magically makes things and has no real control or isn't willfully producing a certain kind of thing. It is labor-intensive, and it is research-intensive. You are making one decision after another, trying to get at something you think is important.