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" 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Today
Think
Doing
Related Quotes:
" I started doing sculpture in 1959. I had no commissions then. They were painted, similar in style to the paintings... At a certain point, I decided I didn't want an edge between two colors, I wanted color differences in literal space. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Differences
Style
Space
" The paintings to me are always canvas; sculpture has always been metal, though I have made sculpture in wood, also. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Canvas
Wood
Sculpture
" 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
People
Drawing
Know
" Time has always been very important in my work. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Always
Been
Important
" All my paintings are usually done in drawing form, very small. I make notations in drawings first, and then I make a collage for color. But drawing is always my notation. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Drawing
Small
Always
" I have a sort of inner sense for scale. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Scale
Sense
Inner
" Shape and color are my two strong things. And by doing this, drawing plants has always led me into my paintings and my sculptures. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Strong
Color
Drawing
" 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 spring. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Thinking
Spring
Drawing
" 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Think
Been
Young
" I like to be able to get swift curves in the plant drawings that are usually drawn in five to ten minutes. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Five
Get
Like
" I'm interested in the space between the viewer and the surface of the painting - the forms and the way they work in their surroundings. I'm interested in how they react to a room. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Room
React
Painting
" Geometry is moribund. I want a lilt and joy to art. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Want
Joy
Geometry
" I said, I don't want to paint things like Picasso's women and Matisse's odalisques lying on couches with pillows. I don't want to paint people. I want to paint something I have never seen before. I don't want to make what I'm looking at. I want the fragments. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Said
People
Women
" 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Life
Kind
Look
" I've always wanted... I wanted to give people joy. "
Ellsworth Kelly
People
Joy
Give
" I like silence. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Silence
Like
" The negative is just as important as the positive. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Negative
Just
Positive
" 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Searching
Visual
Wait
" I don't like mixed colors that much, like plum color or deep, deep colors that are hard to define. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Hard
Like
Define
" 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Like
White
Started
" 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Me
Ideas
I Can
" I only like artists older than myself. Time is so important. It's always been the same way, I guess. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Way
Time
Myself
" 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Book
Bird
Boy
" I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!' "
Ellsworth Kelly
Direction
God
Say
" When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Feel
Drawing
White
" I don't labor over my drawings. I want to get freedom in the line. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Want
Freedom
Get
" Shading is more like copying. And certainly I do copy, but I'm making drawings, and I'm not trying to make them with the shading. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Like
Trying
Make
" Gray goes with gold. Gray goes with all colors. I've done gray-and-red paintings, and gray and orange go so well together. It takes a long time to make gray because gray has a little bit of color in it. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Together
Time
Gold
" Each drawing that I've done, I have found. Meaning, I see a plant I want to draw. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Plant
Meaning
See
" 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Even
Exist
You