One of the first drawings I did in Paris - I wasn't thinking of doing drawings, but somehow or other, I kept drawing - I bought a hyacinth flower with a lot of leaves, just to make me feel like… — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share Image
In Paris in the late '40s, I started making my first reliefs. They are separate panels. I wanted to do something coming out of the wall, almost like a collage. I did a lot of white reliefs when I started… — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share Image
I don't like acrylic because you can't get the density of color. And with each coat of oil paint, the surface gets better and… — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share Image
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… — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share
All my work comes from perceiving. I kept seeing things that were brooding in me. I'm not a geometric artist. — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share Image
My ideas I can find anywhere. And I draw because I have to note down my ideas or flashes - I call them flashes,… — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share Image
The paintings to me are always canvas; sculpture has always been metal, though I have made sculpture in wood, also. — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share Image
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… — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share Image
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… — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share
I only like artists older than myself. Time is so important. It's always been the same way, I guess. — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share Image
Matisse draws what I call the essence of the plants. He leaves a shape open. He'll do a leaf and not close it. Everybody… — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share Image
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… — Ellsworth Kelly Copy Share Image
