Kehinde Wiley Quotes

When I travel, I connect with creative people in all different fields and disciplines. It's sort of just to keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on. I think that's important.

In both business and personal life, I've always found that travel inspires me more than anything else I do. Evidence of the languages, cultures, scenery, food, and design sensibilities that I discover all over the world can be found in every piece of my jewelry.

I kind of feel like a global citizen - wherever I go, I have friends, so I don't get too lonely.

Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.

On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.

I've only ever known growing up across different countries - to me it's just fun.

I was raised around a lot of artists, musicians, photographers, painters and people that were in theater. Just having the art-communal hippie experience as a child, there wasn't a clear line that was drawn. We celebrated creative experience and creative expression. We didn't try and curtail it and stunt any of that kind of growth.

I feel blessed to even be able to put out an English album. Not too many Latin artists get the opportunity to come out and record another genre that's so different to Bachata.

Spending years between America and Israel, I have gained a global view, and the planet is my home.

The characters that populate my books are global nomads in their own right, keeping multiple homes around the world and constantly jet-setting to new places.

Painting keeps me occupied in those moments when travel can be aimless and even disorienting. Mainly it is a way to register at least some of the new impressions of a foreign place, when its thrilling barrage can sometimes overwhelm you.

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.

I divide my time between Columbia, Maryland, and Lagos, Nigeria.

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.

China is important to the world in that they are a force and on the move. Exposing them to figurative art opens up a potential for artistic expression far greater than anyone would ever have dreamed possible until today. It is this very spirit of the struggle and determination to triumph that inspires creative expression.

Trends in fashion, design and pop culture are taking on more global influence, and of course, one thing that's always in style is color.

In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything - from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up - grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music.

Can that make any sense - a Belgian artist living in Mexico and working in Afghanistan?

Rule of art: Cant kills creativity!

'Art or anti-art?' was the question I asked when I returned from Munich in 1912 and decided to abandon pure painting or painting for its own sake. I thought of introducing elements alien to painting as the only way out of a pictorial and chromatic dead end.

I always feel like it is a privilege to be able to be an artist and to be able to exhibit my work all over the world.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

I should like to present myself to the young painters of the year 2000 with the wings of a butterfly.

I'm a nomad. I have a place in New York in the Flatiron District, and I have a place in Paris in Ile Saint-Louis, and I spend a lot of time in Congo.

I'm inspired by different cultures around the world and love to incorporate these facets into my collection.