Rashid Johnson Quotes

The way that light hits objects in life, three-dimensional objects before you photograph them, is really the story of photography.

From the very beginning, I was very interested just in light, and art seemed to be a way to work with it.

Shadows sometimes people don't see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny.

The substance of painting is light.

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

My quest, through the magic of light and shadow, is to isolate, to simplify, and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity.

I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.

In the bit of painting that I've done, I'm interested in colour and texture. I'm very interested in transparency.

Stained glass is unique from the outside, but as a painting insider, I know that oil painting's all about light. And it's about the depiction of light, the way that it bounces off different types of skin, different landscapes. The mastery of that light is the obsession of most of my painter friends.

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

I've always been interested in art, architecture, color.

Light is everything in photographs and has to be considered in all situations.

Death is pitch-dark, but colors are light. To be a painter, one must work with rays of light.

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.

One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it.

One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find.

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.

Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk.

Art history is littered with work that involves light.

I see only forms that are lit up and forms that are not. There is only light and shadow.

Whether it's a computer or a pen drawing, design is about drawing shapes and making physical things.

The animation of the canvas is one of the hardest problems of painting.

I was a fine arts major in college, and a painter for many years. And I found that, like writing, art is very similar.

I'm interested in the space between the viewer and the surface of the painting - the forms and the way they work in their surroundings. I'm interested in how they react to a room.