Chris Ofili Quotes

Most of the power of painting comes through the manipulation of space... but I don't understand that.

The actual technique, the process of painting flat color and simple geometric edges, all dates from my time here on Coenties Slip.

One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters.

When you make a painting, even abstract, there is always a sort of necessary filling-in.

A great painting is a great painting.

Illustrating is more about communicating specific ideas to a reader. Painting is more like pure science, more about the act of painting.

I really like the language of painting.

Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.

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.

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

We would sift through every inch of what it was that worked, or if it didn't, and wonder what was effective in it, in terms of paint, the subject matter, the size, the drawing.

When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out.

I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

This truth must be recognized as a dogma and assume the validity of an axiom in the general understanding of painting.

Painters must speak through paint, not through words.

Painting is a coalescing of experience.

What do you see when you look at a representational painting? Most of the time, the first thing I see is a flat piece of canvas covered with colored patterns.

The substance of painting is light.

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

Nature engenders the science of painting.

Painting is something that requires a lot of time - it's not just one good idea out of art school.

I kind of do the drawing with the painting in mind, but it's very hard to guess at a size or a color and all the colors around it and what it will really look like.

In painting, you don't have to go through a process of opinion; it speaks directly, and either it works, or it doesn't.