Kehinde Wiley Quotes

What it is is a type of editorialization, you know? This is self-portraiture. This is what you think about the world we live in.

I studied shades, textures by painting after the Old Masters, the classical European paintings, as part of my educational process.

There's something really cool about being able to fly to South Africa and watch one of the most talented African footballers wearing a shoe on the field.

In some way they are all self-portraits, but I think I know what you mean by asking this - I would say, it is too idealistic to paint yourself.

I had an amazing instructor, Joseph Gotto , who, as a painter, spoke to me as it - he didn't condescend.

I have been painting white people for much longer in my life than I have done for colored people.

Your best as an artist is to create something that resonates for you.

The artists ultimately respond to the public.

In the end I'm in love with it [Western European easel painting]. And that's where a lot of the influence from the work comes from.

I was 11 when I was first introduced to live drawing classes and going to art school.

There was no image of the other biological half of myself. And as an artists, as a - as an - as a portraitist, the look of who you are was radically important to me.

After high school I went to the San Francisco Art Institute, and I began a formalized art education where we went through the history of art but we also went through the art of my contemporaries.

That should be something that an artist can respond to as well in terms of a painting.

I love the flexibility of saying, "Today we're making 50-foot paintings, and we're going to have to join hands and figure out how that's going to work." But in the end, it's a possibility.

I love being able to have a team.

While I can hire out the portrait, I don't, because it's just - that's where I shine. You know, that's my blood sport.

Just so [becoming a chef ] that I could support my art habit. You know? I mean, this is - this is something where you've been literally given an opportunity to put the world on pause for a second.

I love being a portraitist.

So sometimes you have to play your hand and sort of push in a direction. And I think that masculinity is the driving point for a lot of the way that people, like, posture in the work.

Portraiture is something that we're all drawn to. I think primarily other forms - we prefer, by and large, to look at human beings than a bowl of fruit.

There is no purity with regards to the marketplace and art, I believe.

I think it's possible to allow an artist to go beyond his borders and play.

I was surrounded by art by virtue of not only the educational opportunities that my mother's foresight availed me to.

Most people say, "Hell, no. I don't know who you are. This scares me. Like, I'm not interested in this."Another way of looking at these paintings is, these are the guys who said yes.

I have a lot of problems with Western European easel painting.

I'm fully capable of multitasking certain conceptual concerns within the work.

You have to bring books to explain your work.

This is - it's a sociological experiment in many ways. And so you're seeing the results of what happens when you put a lot of boys in a room looking at art history.

At the same time I really enjoy painting flesh.

There's always a tug of war. Like, in the States, in America, there's certainly a higher quotient, I would imagine, of, like, macho, like, masculinity posturing.

What's interesting about my project recently is that I'm going out into broader global spaces but then isolating at the same time - sort of pushing out but then pulling in.

As a twin, I operate with twin desires.

For me, I wanted to create something that's much more driven by a type of selfishness, a type of decadence.

Usually I bring very attractive women with me to excite interest. I mean, it's a type of, like, strangers-with-candy situation.

I think that the Kehinde Wiley brand is something that I'm working towards expanding and to inclusion.

You'll find that street casting in America is a lot different than street casting in different nations.

My mother's from Texas. Small town outside of Waco called Downsville. And my father's from Nigeria. And so I guess I'm properly African-American.

There is no pedestrian culture [in South Central Los Angeles].

Mel [Bochner] sets a very high standard. He expects only the best and most thoughtful and rigorous examinations, not only of the history of art but your own practice.

My peers at the time: you know, young black kids from off the streets of Harlem, having these conversations with me in my small, dirty little studio up in Harlem.

I think that one of the questions that I asked of myself in later years was to this point of the political directive.

I think it was a matter of, like, I'm not going to have my kids in these wild streets. Both my twin brother and I were in art school together.

I actually studied cooking and, like, was thinking about becoming a chef.

[My parents] met in university back in the '70s. And I didn't grow up with my father. He - they separated before I was born.