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
My mother introduced to me as a child the world of language: the way in which translation can be a system by… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
The way we think about a presidential portrait is one that is imbued with dignity from the outset. — 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
We have a lot of sort of received historical ways of viewing portraiture. And I suppose in some way I'm sort of… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
So sometimes you have to play your hand and sort of push in a direction. And I think that masculinity is the… — 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
There is a political and racial context behind everything that I do. Not always because I design it that way, or because… — 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
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
I think, something that you might be able to locate in the work that I'm creating today: the ability to look at… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
All the world's a stage. P.T. Barnum: It becomes a circus. But circuses or street pageants or parades have always been useful… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
The ability to look at certain patterns with regards to urban fashion, with regards to swagger, with regards to cultural hegemony, with… — 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
Can I - do I have to be obsessed with it and proceed from that? Not always. But when I'm on top… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
I feel sometimes constrained by the expectation that the work should be solely political. I try to create a type of work… — 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
What I love in art is that it takes known combinations and reorders them in a way that sheds light on something… — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share Image
Like, the smells and the sights and the sounds. As an artist, you want to sort of be able to engage that… — 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
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
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
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
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
I think the world that I grew up in was like being in this sort of magical artistic garden. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
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
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
Painting is situational. And my particular situation exists within gender, race, class, sexuality, nation. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
There were certain expectations that were assumed of me as a young black American 20th-century - then 20th-century artist. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
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
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
I believe that artists should be part of the culture. I think that my work clearly bears that out. — Kehinde Wiley Copy Share
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
