Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
All Quotes by author - Chris Ofili
" A lot of what Trinidad is about is the feeling of the place, the atmosphere of the place, particularly at night, and the mystery of the forest. "
Place
Forest
Night
" Change is not indecision. "
Indecision
Change
" Doubt is important because it suggests progress. Total certainty can mean there's no assessment of things. Doubt, if you don't panic, can allow newness to come in and challenge something that's an established mode. "
Challenge
You
Important
" I believe in God, but I'm not dominated by it. "
God
Believe
I Believe In
" I don't think I met anyone posh until I went to London. "
Met
London
Anyone
" I love Manchester. I love Manchester United. But I would really struggle to be creative there. I feel a bit lost, over-familiar maybe. Maybe too stuck in my own web of history. "
History
Love
Struggle
" I'm aware that success can overwhelm you. The perception of you can be elevated to such a status that it's not you any more. "
Perception
More
You
" I've always set out to embrace all that I am. "
Am
Set
Always
" I was an altar boy and heard the Bible being read out repeatedly. The stories have stayed with me, although they're completely remixed in my head. And often, when I do further reading, I'm quite surprised by the difference between the real story and my memory of the story. "
Boy
Story
Memory
" I was brought up a Catholic and was an altar boy. "
Brought
Catholic
Up
" I was listening to a lot of hip hop, music like Public Enemy that was about raising consciousness, and I realised I could feed that directly into my work, using images in a way that was a bit like sampling - taking images from diverse places, exploring the contradictions without trying to hide the seams. "
Music
Enemy
Listening
" I wouldn't say even that I'm a broadly political person. But on occasion, I have felt that I have no choice but to paint something with a strong moral stance. "
Say
Strong
Moral
" London was an exciting place to work at one point because, socially, it was very progressive - a catalyst. There were very interesting artists making all types of work, but it got to a point where the social aspect became claustrophobic. "
London
Interesting
Place
" Moving to Trinidad was a great experiment. I never knew what it would do to my work or even if it would be accepted by people and not be seen as me just falling off the edge of the earth. "
Earth
Me
Moving
" Often I think changes within my work have been seen as sudden changes or sharp changes, but for me they're not that sudden. They have been there in the studio, but not so much in public. "
Think
Changes
Within
" Sometimes, as I feel a door or an exit point in my work is closing, I'll try to create an opening so as not to stifle the creative process, which I see as a process that's never-ending. "
Work
Create
Door
" The church is not made up of one person but a whole congregation, and they should be able to interact with art without being told what to think. "
Art
Person
Think
" There's a magic that comes from playing entirely to who you are. I've got my specialist subject - in the Mastermind sense - and I wouldn't change it, or who I am. "
Magic
Sense
I Am
" There was a point in time where the thought of people even talking about me made me anxious. Physically. "
Me
Made
Talking
" The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion. "
Result
Laboratory
Conclusion
" The studio is a place where I can experiment before I'm prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time. "
Me
Place
Time
" Trinidad was an opportunity to start all over again, to have another stab at it. The mystery and atmosphere of the place have entered my palette a lot more than I thought they would. "
Start
Thought
Mystery
" We all studied math, but we don't go around spewing numbers. Religion should be used in the appropriate way. "
Religion
Go
Math
" When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life. "
Life
College
Myself
" When I was painting in art school - and I think many painters in the 1980s worked similarly - a finished painting would often be constructed from lots of other paintings underneath. Some of these individual layers of painting were better than others, but that was something that you would often only realise retrospectively. "
Think
Art
Painting
Check our other websites:
BookDark
MusicDark