James Turrell Quotes

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 fascinating thing, is not to show the source of light, but the effect of light.

Architecture which enters into a symbiosis with light does not merely create form in light, by day and at night, but allow light to become form.

Light and the rational forms are locked in combat; light sets them into motion, bends what is straight, makes parallels oval, inscribes circles in the intervals, makes the intervals active.

Light has called forth one organ to become its like, and thus the eye is formed by the light and for the light so that the inner light may emerge to meet the outer light.

To have a certain new eight-and-a-hal f-minute-old light from the sun-to feel it physically, almost as we taste things-this is where you can work with light like that.

It is with color that you render light, though you must also feel this light, have it within yourself.

Paint your picture by means of the lights. Lights define texture and color - shadows define form.

I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination.

My work is about your seeing. There is a rich tradition in painting of work about light, but it is not light -- it is the record of seeing. My material is light, and it is responsive to your seeing.

Every hue throughout your work is altered by every touch you add in other places.

The spectator, as he walks the gallery, will stop, or pass along. To give a general air of grandeur at first view, all trifling, or artful play of little lights, or an attention to a variety of tints is to be avoided; a quietness and simplicity must reign over the whole work, to which a breadth of uniform and simple color will very much contribute.

Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens.

The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.

There are different kinds of painting, some with lights and some without, but still if you look at any painting here (in the light) and then over here (out of the light) it's an entirely different thing. The consciousness of this came to the Impressionists and I'm very interested in that.

Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else - by color.

Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.

Movie-making is the process of turning money into light. All they have at the end of the day is images flickering on a wall.

Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light.

I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.

The source of all light is in the eye.

My monumental netted sculptural environments move through time, animated by an ever-changing 'wind choreography,' making invisible air currents suddenly visible to the human eye. I make living, breathing pieces that respond to the forces of nature - wind, light, water.

All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.

Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect.