Quotes by Ellsworth Kelly - Page 1

The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something and then translate how I see it.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Smile
Pleasure
Vision
World
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I like silence.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Silence
Like
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All my work begins with drawings.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
All My Work
Begins
Drawings
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I have a sort of inner sense for scale.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Scale
Inner
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I've always wanted... I wanted to give people joy.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Joy
Wanted
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The negative is just as important as the positive.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Negative
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Geometry is moribund. I want a lilt and joy to art.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Geometry
Joy
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I'm constantly investigating nature - nature, meaning everything.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Investigating
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I don't labor over my drawings. I want to get freedom in the line.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Labor
Drawings
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I always felt that a painted edge between two colors was a depiction somehow.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Depiction
Colors
Edge
Painted
Somehow
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Each drawing that I've done, I have found. Meaning, I see a plant I want to draw.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Plant
Draw
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I did not want windows, only skylights. I chose my painting wall as it has the best morning light.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Light
Painting
Wall
Chose
Windows
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I don't like mixed colors that much, like plum color or deep, deep colors that are hard to define.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Colors
Define
Mixed
Plum
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My drawings have to be quick. If they don't happen in 20 minutes or a half hour, then they're no good.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Drawings
Hour
Quick
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I like to be able to get swift curves in the plant drawings that are usually drawn in five to ten minutes.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Curves
Plant
Drawings
Drawn
Swift
Ten Minutes
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All my work comes from perceiving. I kept seeing things that were brooding in me. I'm not a geometric artist.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Artist
Brooding
Geometric
Seeing
All My Work
Perceiving
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When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Paper
White
Me Feel See
Beginning
Draw
Piece
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The paintings to me are always canvas; sculpture has always been metal, though I have made sculpture in wood, also.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Canvas
Sculpture
Metal
Wood
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I was taught to draw very well when I was in school at Boston. And I grew to enjoy drawing so much that I never stopped.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Boston
Draw
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Shading is more like copying. And certainly I do copy, but I'm making drawings, and I'm not trying to make them with the shading.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Copy
Drawings
Shading
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Shape and color are my two strong things. And by doing this, drawing plants has always led me into my paintings and my sculptures.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Drawing
Always Me Doing
Led
Plants
Sculptures
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I don't like acrylic because you can't get the density of color. And with each coat of oil paint, the surface gets better and richer.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Density
Oil
Paint
Surface
Coat
Richer
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My forms are geometric, but they don't interact in a geometric sense. They're just forms that exist everywhere, even if you don't see them.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Geometric
Forms
Interact
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In Boston, I developed my eye from the drawing. In Paris, I was fascinated by what my eye saw in the way that Paris is built, its 'measure.'
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Boston
Drawing
Eye
Fascinated
Developed
Saw
Measure
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My ideas come, wh-pheww. And I draw. Just recently, when I'm searching for ideas for paintings and sculptures, I wait for ideas, and it's always visual.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Visual
Draw
Sculptures
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I learned my color in Europe. I've always been a colorist, I think. I started when I was very young, being a bird-watcher, fascinated by the bird colors.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Bird
Fascinated
Colors
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All my paintings are usually done in drawing form, very small. I make notations in drawings first, and then I make a collage for color. But drawing is always my notation.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Drawing
Collage
Notation
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I have trained my eye over and over ever since I was a kid. I was a bird watcher when I was a little boy. My grandmother gave me a bird book, and I got to like their colors.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Bird
Colors
Trained
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I'm not an Expressionist. I love to look at de Kooning, but I've got this kind of secret life, and that is something that pleases me. I have to try and make something out of it.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Life Love Me
Life Love Look
Expressionist
Pleases
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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.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Space
Painting
Surroundings
Interested
Forms
Room
React
Viewer
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I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Angle
Instance
Appears
Direction
Invent
Oh My God
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Matisse draws what I call the essence of the plants. He leaves a shape open. He'll do a leaf and not close it. Everybody used to say, oh, I got it all from Matisse, and I said, 'Not really.'
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Draws
Essence
Leaf
Leaves
Plants
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One of the first drawings I did in Paris - I wasn't thinking of doing drawings, but somehow or other, I kept drawing - I bought a hyacinth flower with a lot of leaves, just to make me feel like spring.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Drawing
Flower
Spring
Thinking
Bought
Leaves
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Gray goes with gold. Gray goes with all colors. I've done gray-and-red paintings, and gray and orange go so well together. It takes a long time to make gray because gray has a little bit of color in it.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Gold
Orange
Colors
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My ideas I can find anywhere. And I draw because I have to note down my ideas or flashes - I call them flashes, because they come to me, like that. Not so much in the plant drawings. I have to see them.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Plant
Draw
Me Ideas Find
Flashes
Note
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I started doing sculpture in 1959. I had no commissions then. They were painted, similar in style to the paintings... At a certain point, I decided I didn't want an edge between two colors, I wanted color differences in literal space.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Differences
Literal
Sculpture
Certain Point
Colors
Edge
Painted
Similar
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In Paris in the late '40s, I started making my first reliefs. They are separate panels. I wanted to do something coming out of the wall, almost like a collage. I did a lot of white reliefs when I started because I liked antique reliefs, really old stuff.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Old Stuff
Wall
Antique
Collage
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I said, I don't want to paint things like Picasso's women and Matisse's odalisques lying on couches with pillows. I don't want to paint people. I want to paint something I have never seen before. I don't want to make what I'm looking at. I want the fragments.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Fragments
Lying
Paint
Picasso
Pillows
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My earliest drawing is a supposed Carracci. It wasn't very expensive, I guess, because they don't know if it's a real Carracci. But it has all these seals on it of people who've owned it, and one of the great portrait painters of England, Reynolds, had owned it, so that's the earliest.
Ellsworth Kelly / Painter
Drawing
Expensive
Seals
Great People Real
Earliest
Owned
Painters
Portrait
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Ellsworth Kelly Quotes - Page 1

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