James Turrell Quotes

You have to understand the nature of light.

I am interested in the physicality of light itself.

There is no greater mystery to me than that of light traveling through darkness.

Are not rays of light very small bodies emitted from shining substances?

I look at light as a material. It is physical. It is photons. Yes, it exhibits wave behavior, but it is a thing.

I wanted to deal with light directly rather than with paint.

Light in Nature creates the movement of colors.

Mark Horowitz and I built it onto an optical bench in the lab. We spent and eight-hour span putting this optical light path together.

I think that an artist should be a skilled craftsman.

The model I came up with in 1964 is just the invention of a rather strange sort of medium that looks the same in all directions and produces a kind of refraction that is a little bit more complicated than that of light in glass or water.

Intensity like signal strength will generally fall off with distance from the source, although it also depends on the local conditions and the pathway from the source to the point.

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.

A radio telescope pointing at the sky receives radiation not only from space, but also from other sources including the ground, the earth's atmosphere, and the components of the radio telescope itself.

With watercolour, you can't cover up the marks. There's the story of the construction of the picture, and then the picture might tell another story as well.

Sculpture is made by taking away, while painting is made by adding.

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

I create my subjects somehow visualizing them in my style. I start as a poet, put the colors and composition down on canvas as a painter, but finish my work as a sculptor taking delight in caressing the forms.

Painting is something that takes place among the colors.

Art is craft, not inspiration.

Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light.

When I look at photographs, I couldn't care less "how."

In all my works, light is an important controlling factor.

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

Art should be born from the materials.

I painted with acrylic paint, and the reason why I went to oil was mainly because I didn't control it. I was looking for the insecurity of it. I mean, I might have found another reason later, but at that moment, the reason was I was looking for the insecurity.