Ellsworth Kelly

“Each drawing that I've done, I have found. Meaning, I see a plant I want to draw.”

“I like to be able to get swift curves in the plant drawings that are usually drawn in five to ten minutes.”

“I learned my color in Europe. I've always been a colorist, I think. I started when I was very young, being a bird-watcher, fascinated by the bird colors.”

“My earliest drawing is a supposed Carracci. It wasn't very expensive, I guess, because they don't know if it's a real Carracci. But it has all these seals on it of people who've owned it, and one of the great portrait painters of England, Reynolds, had owned it, so that's the earliest.”

“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 richer.”

“My forms are geometric, but they don't interact in a geometric sense. They're just forms that exist everywhere, even if you don't see them.”

“I just feel like I can live on. I hope I can reach 100. I think today if you just keep doing, keep working, that - maybe that's possible.”

“I have trained my eye over and over ever since I was a kid. I was a bird watcher when I was a little boy. My grandmother gave me a bird book, and I got to like their colors.”

“Time has always been very important in my work.”

“I only like artists older than myself. Time is so important. It's always been the same way, I guess.”

“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 used to say, oh, I got it all from Matisse, and I said, 'Not really.'”

“I'm not an Expressionist. I love to look at de Kooning, but I've got this kind of secret life, and that is something that pleases me. I have to try and make something out of it.”

“All my work comes from perceiving. I kept seeing things that were brooding in me. I'm not a geometric artist.”

“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 because I liked antique reliefs, really old stuff.”

“When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything.”

“I was taught to draw very well when I was in school at Boston. And I grew to enjoy drawing so much that I never stopped.”

“My drawings have to be quick. If they don't happen in 20 minutes or a half hour, then they're no good.”

“My ideas I can find anywhere. And I draw because I have to note down my ideas or flashes - I call them flashes, because they come to me, like that. Not so much in the plant drawings. I have to see them.”

“My ideas come, wh-pheww. And I draw. Just recently, when I'm searching for ideas for paintings and sculptures, I wait for ideas, and it's always visual.”

“I don't labor over my drawings. I want to get freedom in the line.”