Artist Quotes by Kehinde Wiley

How does the artist function as poet-slash-witness-slash-trickster?

— Kehinde Wiley

The artists ultimately respond to the public.

— Kehinde Wiley

My love affair with painting is bittersweet.

— Kehinde Wiley

I think that an obsession with art history gave rise to the work.

— Kehinde Wiley

I guess art is in the eye of the beholder.

— Kehinde Wiley

You don't hire Kehinde Wiley to have a tame painting.

— Kehinde Wiley

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

— Kehinde Wiley

At the same time I really enjoy painting flesh.

— Kehinde Wiley

Painting has the ability to communicate something about the sitter that gets to his essence.

— Kehinde Wiley

On the contrary, my desire is that the viewer sees the background coming forward in the lower portion of the canvas, fighting…

— Kehinde Wiley

The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become…

— Kehinde Wiley

There were certain expectations that were assumed of me as a young black American 20th-century - then 20th-century artist.

— Kehinde Wiley

This is something that, as artists, we constantly deal with-throwing away the past, slaying the father, and creating the new. This desire…

— Kehinde Wiley

At its best, what art does is, it points to who we as human beings and what we as human beings value.…

— Kehinde Wiley

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

— Kehinde Wiley

If people looked at me like I was a little different, I would maybe sit next to them, and I would draw.

— Kehinde Wiley

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…

— Kehinde Wiley

There is a political and racial context behind everything that I do. Not always because I design it that way, or because…

— Kehinde Wiley

[My twin brother] he was the star artist of the family as we - as we were growing up. He eventually lost…

— Kehinde Wiley

I pay my models to work with me, so there becomes this weird sort of economic bartering thing, which made me feel…

— Kehinde Wiley

What I try to do is defy expectations in terms of boundaries, whether it is high or low art, pop culture, or…

— Kehinde Wiley

If I were making paintings of a bowl of fruit it would still be viewed through some sort of political lens, because…

— Kehinde Wiley

That's partly the success of my work-the ability to have a young black girl walk into the Brooklyn Museum and see paintings…

— Kehinde Wiley

I think my life has been transformed by the ability to take things that exist in the world and look at them…

— Kehinde Wiley

I think didactic art is boring. I mean, I love it in terms of, like, some of the historical precedents that I've…

— Kehinde Wiley

I think that once you're able to sort of get in line with who and how you relate to the world, you'll…

— Kehinde Wiley

When we talk about Orientalist painting, we're talking about painting generally from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, and some would say…

— Kehinde Wiley

I had no idea about where I was going. I had no sense of art as anything other than a problem to…

— Kehinde Wiley

In high school I went to the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. And this is like Fame. It's like…

— Kehinde Wiley

So much of my work is defined by the difference between the figure in the foreground and the background. Very early in…

— Kehinde Wiley

It became a question of taste. I have a certain taste in art history. And that - I had a huge library…

— Kehinde Wiley

Much like teaching art to young art students age 10 to 15 or so on, you have to break it down into…

— Kehinde Wiley

I taught myself to paint African-Americans, mostly people roughly my skin tone.

— Kehinde Wiley

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

— Kehinde Wiley

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

— Kehinde Wiley

So much of the history of painting is the propaganda of self-aggrandizement.

— Kehinde Wiley

Almost as though the painting itself becomes the embodiment of a type of struggle for visibility, and this might be considered the…

— Kehinde Wiley

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

— Kehinde Wiley

Is it the responsibility of the colored artist or the ethnic artist to create works that are designed to exist in opposition…

— Kehinde Wiley

Artists have been very good at working for the church and for the state; communicating the aspirations of a society.

— Kehinde Wiley