James Turrell Quotes

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.

Photography helps people to see.

I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary.

This thing called the camera, that takes everything in equally, taught me a lot about how to see.

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

Draw what you see.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

Even with painting, even abstract paintings, you need the incoming of, light on the canvas.

Photography is, first of all, a way of seeing.

Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light.

Remember...we don't see objects, we see light. [...] Light can do anything water can do--flow, wash, trickle. It can do anything an artist can do--paint, burnish, carve. Candlelight falls, licks a face. There is always light in a room.

What we see, we see and seeing is changing

I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some ways gather it, or seem to hold it...my work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing.

The thing is that when you don't carry a camera, that's when you see pictures in particular, or at least that's when you think you see pictures in particular. When you do carry it, if you do see one on the occasion that you do, you can take it.

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

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

Good painting is like good cooking; it can be tasted, but not explained.

Light comes to us by the sensibility. Without visual sensibility there is no light, no movement.

Color is everywhere, so everything has changed. I still can't see color, but I can perceive it. I can experience it in a way that allows me to be a part of this reality, which I was excluded from before. Thanks to the eyeborg, I've made a career by combining music and art.

The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes.

For 'Picture This,' I wanted it to be a drawing book that didn't have any instructions about drawing, beyond the real simple stuff you'd find like in a Bazooka bubblegum wrapper, or in 'Highlights' magazine. I just wanted it to be feelings about looking and seeing and pictures.

In art, as in science, reductionism does not trivialize our perception - of color, light, and perspective - but allows us to see each of these components in a new way.

A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.