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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.