Painting does more than just point to things. The very act of pointing is a value statement. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I had an amazing instructor, Joseph Gotto , who, as a painter, spoke to me as it - he didn't condescend. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Painting has the ability to communicate something about the sitter that gets to his essence. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I have been painting white people for much longer in my life than I have done for colored people. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
So much of the history of painting is the propaganda of self-aggrandizement. — 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
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
The ability to be the first African-American painter to paint the first African-American president of the United States is absolutely overwhelming. It… — 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 its best, what art does is, it points to who we as human beings and what we as human beings value.… — 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… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
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… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
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 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 was trying. I was crawling. I was coming into myself. I was trying to in some ways get beyond - what… — 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
Feudal Europe is over, but it found its way into film culture. It found its way into postmodern painting culture, and we're… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
If I were making paintings of a bowl of fruit it would still be viewed through some sort of political lens, because… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I pay my models to work with me, so there becomes this weird sort of economic bartering thing, which made me feel… — 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
So much of my work is defined by the difference between the figure in the foreground and the background. Very early in… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I think, at the L.A. County Museum of Art, I saw my first example of Kerry James Marshall, who had a very… — 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
That should be something that an artist can respond to as well in terms of a painting. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
I am interested in evolution within my thinking. I am not interested in the evolution of my paint. — 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've jokingly painted some of my favorite collectors as black men, so there's a really great portrait of David LaChapelle, the photographer… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Almost as though the painting itself becomes the embodiment of a type of struggle for visibility, and this might be considered the… — 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
I studied shades, textures by painting after the Old Masters, the classical European paintings, as part of my educational process. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Unlike the background in many of the paintings that I was inspired by or paintings that I borrowed poses from - the… — 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
![“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)
![“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)
![“I think, at the L.A. County Museum of Art, I saw my first example of Kerry James Marshall, who had a very sort of heroic, oversized painting of black men in a barbershop. But it was painted on the same level and with the same urgency that you would see in a grand-scale [Anthony] van Dyck or…” quote by Kehinde Wiley](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a08/kehinde-wiley-1194_art_i-think-at-the-l-a-county-museum-of-art_1563358.jpg)
