Kerry James Marshall Quotes

I treat my projects as art.

I'm very interested to see how this new painting will go - I know I want it big and stark, and as I said, I follow the muse, and that's when it always works perfectly for me.

Sometimes I can see the whole painting from the outset in my mind's eye. But more often than not, that idea doesn't last the duration of the painting. Sometimes it comes out easy, just as I had envisaged. But that is reasonably rare.

Art is that which comes to a man, and stands between himself and an implacable witness: the work.

I love producing! It's so much fun to start with a blank canvas and create the picture you want to create and see it all come together.

I just create, that's what I do.

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen.

As an artist, the most important thing and the most special thing is when your intention shines through on the work.

You get used to it when you feel like you're an artist.

I can't sculpt. But if I were a sculptor, as you start to get something that actually looks like what you want, then it starts to be fun. That's the way I find writing.

Maybe some people, when they sit down to write their great novel or make their great record or paint their great painting, they have it all planned out in their head. But for me, it's never worked that way.

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

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.

I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.

My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

Art has been good for my soul. And it's been good for my brain. I think I'm a better painter now than I was a musician growing up. You struggle to see things and translate an image through your hands to a canvas.

No, I never had any dreams. The process of art is a dream in itself. The artist just doesn't... you work out something. It's yours. You don't have to go to sleep to do that. You do that on the canvas.

I've always said I'm more influenced in what I do by artists, and how they work, how they think, and the freedom they're given to work and think, than I really am by other writers.

I am like a folk painter. Paint and move ahead.

In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say it. That's the difference between art and illustration.

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

But I think that's a particular kind of experience involving a certain immediacy between you and the canvass, you and the particular kind of experience of that particular moment.