Ellsworth Kelly Quotes

The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something and then translate how I see it.

I think that if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract.

In drawing, I don't erase. I believe the original gesture has to be the best.

Making art has first of all to do with honesty. My first lesson was to see objectively, to erase all meaning of the thing seen. Then only could the real meaning of it be understood and felt.

The negative is just as important as the positive.

I have worked to free shape from its ground, and then to work the shape so that it has a definite relationship to the space around it; so that it has a clarity and a measure within itself of its parts (angles, curves, edges and mass); and so that, with color and tonality, the shape finds its own space and always demands its freedom and separateness.

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.

I'm not interested in the texture of a rock, but in its shadow.

I'm not interested in edges. I'm interested in the mass and color, the black and white. The edges happen because the forms get as quiet as they can be. I want the masses to perform. When I work with forms and colors, I get the edge.

The form of my painting is the content. My work is made of single or multiple panels: rectangle, curved, or square. I am less interested in marks on the panels than the 'presence' of the panels themselves. In Red Yellow Blue III the square panels present color. It was made to exist forever in the present; it is an idea and can be repeated anytime in the future.

Everything that I saw became something to be made, and it had to be exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom: there was no longer the need to compose. The subject was there already made, and I could take from everything. It all belonged to me: a glass roof of a factory, with its broken and patched panels, lines on a road map, a corner of a Braque painting, paper fragments in the street. It was all the same: anything goes.

I believe people have to be open to what's happening when they're alive.

Geometry is moribund. I want a lilt and joy to art.

I felt that everything is beautiful, but that which man tries intentionally to make beautiful; that the work of an ordinary bricklayer is more valid than the artwork of all but a very few artists.

I noticed that the large windows between the paintings [in the Musee d'Art Moderne] interested me more than the art exhibited. From then on, painting as I had known it was finished for me.

A lot of young painters love to incorporate celebrity. One idea of being a painter is to use what's happening at the time. Velázquez was painting of his time. And so was Rembrandt. And Francis Bacon was painting his time in London. He was a real mover, but he saw the insect in the rose. But yes, when I do a painting, I want to take the "I did this" out of it. That's why I started using chance, like the markings on the wood. I never wanted to compose.

Photography isolates the world via an aperture and gives the photographer the means to see differently, to achieve a spontaneous vision that is direct and uncompromising.

My drawings have to be quick. If they don't happen in 20 minutes or a half hour, then they're no good.

Shape and color are my two strong things. And by doing this, drawing plants has always led me into my paintings and my sculptures.

I don't labor over my drawings. I want to get freedom in the line.

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.

I did not want windows, only skylights. I chose my painting wall as it has the best morning light.

All my work begins with drawings. I don’t labor over my drawings. I want to get freedom in the line. I like to be able to get swift curves in the plant drawings that are usually drawn in five to ten minutes.

The paintings to me are always canvas, sculpture has always been metal, though I have made sculpture in wood also.

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.