I believe that artists should be part of the culture. I think that my work clearly bears that out. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
There's something to be said about the art-industrial complex, the collectors who recognize that your work has some sort of future economic… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
In my work, I want to create an understanding, not about what a painting looks like but about what a painting says. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Painting does more than just point to things. The very act of pointing is a value statement. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Art is about changing what we see in our everyday lives and representing it in such a way that it gives us… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
This is - it's a sociological experiment in many ways. And so you're seeing the results of what happens when you put… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
In the end I'm in love with it [Western European easel painting]. And that's where a lot of the influence from the… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
At the core, every artist, no matter what his subject matter happens to be, has to be someone doing the looking. I… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
My interest is in completing an image that is spectacular beyond belief. My fidelity is to the image and the art and… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Just so [becoming a chef ] that I could support my art habit. You know? I mean, this is - this is… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
My work is not about paint. It's about paint at the service of something else. It is not about gooey, chest-beating, macho… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
The erotic and the art historical imagination is something that gets very little play when people talk about my work, and when… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Like commercial stuff is sort of cheap and disposable and fun and can be sort of interesting in many ways. I love… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Going back to that idea that painting sits still and that we give ourselves over to it over time. There's a difference… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I started making work that I assumed would be far too garish, far too decadent, far too black for the world to… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
The art world has become so insular. The rules have become so autodidactic that, in a sense, they lose track of what… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Let's talk about the artist's desire to go beyond the pictorial or the representational and the desire to create the abstract -… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
For example, in one of my last exhibitions I had a 50-foot massive painting with I think perhaps a hundred thousand hand-painted… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
There's always a joy in newness as a painter, and in sub-Saharan Africa, I encountered different realities with regard to light and… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I think that at its best, painting can be an act of juggling perceptions, a hall of mirrors. And it can be… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
While it may seem a little mundane, the material realities of realizing the painting actually have a lot to do with how… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
There's nothing shocking inherently about that, given that so much of the way that artists are taught is by copying old master… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Status and class and social anxiety and perhaps social code are all released when you look at paintings of powerful individuals from… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Artists should be able to thrive and allow their ideas to flourish as much as those in biotechnology or finance. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I believe the artist is capable of contributing to the broader evolution of culture in all of its dimensions. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Painting is situational. And my particular situation exists within gender, race, class, sexuality, nation. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I think what we should concentrate on is what it feels like to be a working artist in the day to day.… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
If art can be at the service of anything, it's about letting us see a state of grace for those people who… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I think the pairing of your material practice with your subject is something that is the constant concern of every artist for… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I went back to my mother's house recently and I saw some of my earlier works as a 15-year-old art student. And… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
There was no image of the other biological half of myself. And as an artists, as a - as an - as… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
In some way they are all self-portraits, but I think I know what you mean by asking this - I would say,… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
That should be something that an artist can respond to as well in terms of a painting. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I was 11 when I was first introduced to live drawing classes and going to art school. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I think that artists provide questions, not answers. We provide provocations rather than fully formed objects. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
My studio practice is a - I suppose a bit more like [Thomas] Gainsborough or [Peter Paul] Rubens in the sense that… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I'd like to walk that fine line between the authentic artist self and the manufactured artist self. I'd like to exist outside… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
What's interesting about young black American artists within the twentieth century, and increasingly within the twenty-first as well, is that there's this… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
If you look at the paintings that I love in art history, these are the paintings where great, powerful men are being… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I have been painting models with black and brown skin only for the past years. So, I did already have this experience,… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Much like teaching art to young art students age 10 to 15 or so on, you have to break it down into bite-sized pieces,… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
The erotic and the art historical imagination is something that gets very little play when people talk about my work, and when they rarely… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
One of the weirdest things that happened to artists and art criticism was this moment when everyone got cynical and stopped believing in the… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
At its best, what art does is, it points to who we as human beings and what we as human beings value. And if… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
My style is in the 21st century. If you look at the process, it goes from photography through Photoshop, where certain features are heightened,… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I think the world that I grew up in was like being in this sort of magical artistic garden. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
It was something that came sort of matter-of-factually. Because there - it's like really - real honest engagement with the people around me and… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
We're wired to be empathetic and to care about the needs of others, but also to be curious about others. And I think that's… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Painting is situational. And my particular situation exists within gender, race, class, sexuality, nation. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
There were certain expectations that were assumed of me as a young black American 20th-century - then 20th-century artist. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I think, something that you might be able to locate in the work that I'm creating today: the ability to look at a black… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I remember the first time I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and saw a Kerry James Marshall painting with black… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I believe that artists should be part of the culture. I think that my work clearly bears that out. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Just physically, if you looked at the house that I grew up in, my mother created this greenhouse. And surrounded the entire property. And… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
![“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.” quote by Kehinde Wiley](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/dda/kehinde-wiley-1194_ends_in-the-end-i-m-in-love-with-it-western-e_1857256.jpg)
![“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.” quote by Kehinde Wiley](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ef0/kehinde-wiley-1194_art_just-so-becoming-a-chef-that-i-could-sup_2148704.jpg)
![“For example, in one of my last exhibitions I had a 50-foot massive painting with I think perhaps a hundred thousand hand-painted small flowers. This was the Christ painting [The Dead Christ in the Tomb, 2008] in my Down exhibition [2008]. Now, I simply can't spend eight hours a day painting small…” quote by Kehinde Wiley](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f48/kehinde-wiley-1194_christ_for-example-in-one-of-my-last-exhibition_923224.jpg)
![“My studio practice is a - I suppose a bit more like [Thomas] Gainsborough or [Peter Paul] Rubens in the sense that any artist who wants to create a grand narrative on a grand scale has to sort of parse out some of the smaller aspects of painting or the more mundane aspects of painting to others.” quote by Kehinde Wiley](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/9b9/kehinde-wiley-1194_art_my-studio-practice-is-a-i-suppose-a-bit_2097387.jpg)
