Kehinde Wiley Quotes

If you do things, whether it's acting or music or painting, do it without fear - that's my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there's nothing to lose.

My films are a personal reflection on the impact that the state - the system and the world - has on me.

I believe in the autobiographical concept only to the degree that I am able to put onto film all that's passing through my head at the moment of shooting.

I think my painting is so autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it.

The creative writer uses his life as well as being its victim; he can control, in his work, the self-presentation that in actuality is at the mercy of a thousand accidents.

I love photography - I fell in love with photography, I think, because it was my own thing, it wasn't something I needed other people's permission to do. So, it was really freeing for me actually to be able to not be a famous person and just to take pictures.

I can make any film I want to make.

I don't like being locked in a cage on the creative scale. I need an outlet.

I've experienced a lot of creative freedom because I'm on a family label. It was nice to put out what I wanted to say and do what I wanted to do.

[Salomaybe] is my presentation, my vision of the world. Not so much to satisfy the audience at large.

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

It's good to be employable, but I hope to show the truth. The paintings seem true because nobody wants me to do them.

To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom.

As a teacher I approach my students purely with the human desire to free them from all scholarly inhibitions, and I tell them, "Painters must speak through paint not through words."

I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all woman, as well as all of me.

Me releasing my music, if anything, is an opportunity to show the world my stories and tell the world my stories.

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.

You're the artist - you make the music that you want to make.

You get to be your own curator of your own exhibits inside.

When I want to go be Chickenfoot, I go out and I'm the artist. It's all musical.

When we did Cubist paintings, our intention was not to produce Cubist paintings but to express what was within us. No one laid down a course of action for us, and our friends the poets followed our endeavour attentively but they never dictated it to us.

The awesome thing about being an artist? You can't be fired from your own mind.

Poets and painters have the power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of.

There's such a freedom about being an artist... You're not accountable - you're this renegade thing.

If you get the you-are-a-genius label, it can limit you. Because I'm not so scrutinized, I have more freedom. And that let's me write what I want.