Kehinde Wiley Quotes

I spent a good amount of time with David Bowie, and I was talking about getting the band back together. He said, 'Does it make you uncomfortable?' I said 'Yeah,', and he said, 'Good. It should. You should be uncomfortable.'

I don't like talking about my work at all. I find it very difficult. I never know what to say. It's too close to me, and there's so many things happening unconsciously while I'm working that I'm not aware of, and people will point these things out to me, and I'll say, "That's interesting." But I don't know what to make of it.

The interesting thing about this is I don't know what my vision [ in Salome the play and Salomaybe] is yet about. I'm sensing something and I'm going along with it. It reminds me of a painting, the way Jackson Pollack painted - Jackson Pollack, the great, great artist.

If I'm talking to a photographer, I'm talking to a stylist, I'm talking to a makeup artist, we're kind of creating and collaborating and making something that is artwork and is special and is different.

I try to just put a blank stage in front of them, and say, "This is your space; you tell me where you're coming from and where you're going." At a certain point, it was interesting as the project started to become what it is now, The Source, which has a physical installation and also an online presence. As we started building the installation, I started thinking, "It's really strange that we're building this installation, this piece of architecture you can go into." It's almost strange because I suppose it's an artwork, but it's an artwork that's really constructed out of ideas.

What's interesting about making art is that you take everything you know about it and you bring it up to that point, and you start making a physical thing that addresses what that is. And when you do it, you don't know anything about it - if it's going to work or not work.

I tell the actors that the biggest gift they can give me is to fail. And that the second gift they can give me is to surprise me.

I really love printmaking. It’s like a mystery and you’re trying to figure out how to rein it in.

Research can be interesting, but it can be pointless as well. The realities of making a movie often are not conducive with that. I'm not knocking it. I love doing research myself, but I admit it doesn't always add to the performance.

Strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and the littlenesses are in it.

Though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.

My pictures are made up of four or five colors that collide with one another.

I find that it's a very odd thing to think of competition when you're talking about what I still think of as art. I don't think of competing with actors or filmmakers at all. You do compete, in a way, at the box office, but we're far enough apart when both films are coming out that I'm not concerned with that either.

I am certain about what I will never do - but not about what my art will render.

If it's something that I feel uncomfortable with, that's a reason for me to write it. I kind of like to make myself feel uncomfortable. I think if you're starting to feel uncomfortable with something when you're writing it, that's the reason really to push on with it.

Politicians think they have answers for everything. We artists, we only have questions.

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

All intervening steps, scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed work models, studies thoughts, conversations, are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product

I never knew where I was going to end up when I started film. I didn't start film to be famous. Of course, it's a public medium, and of course we chose a public medium because we like people to pay attention to the work that we're doing. But I didn't know what I was going to end up.

I've always just been really interesting in humans, whether I knew it or not, back then. To be able to recreate that and express that was definitely something I wanted to do.

You're making something that won't be what it is until some unknown date in the future. All aspects of the personal disappear.

Photography is solitary and there are lags between seeing with your eyes and seeing through the lens, and then seeing the image on your computer... I often see things after the fact. So there’s a revelatory quality. And this definitely includes a sense of playfulness, because you’re not sure what the consequences are going to be.

I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.

I went into my own black-out period which lasted two or three years where the canvases would simply build up until they'd get like stone and it was always just a gray mess. The image wouldn't emerge, but I worked pretty regularly. I was fighting to find I knew not what, but I could no longer stay with what I had.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.