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" In Boston, I developed my eye from the drawing. In Paris, I was fascinated by what my eye saw in the way that Paris is built, its 'measure.' "
Ellsworth Kelly
Drawing
Boston
Eye
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" I'm constantly investigating nature - nature, meaning everything. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Constantly
Everything
Meaning
" 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
" 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 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 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" All my work comes from perceiving. I kept seeing things that were brooding in me. I'm not a geometric artist. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Work
Seeing
Things
" 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
" I like silence. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Silence
Like
" 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
" My drawings have to be quick. If they don't happen in 20 minutes or a half hour, then they're no good. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Half
Then
Quick
" 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.' "
Ellsworth Kelly
Said
Open
Leaf
" 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Enjoy
Boston
Never
" 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
" 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
" I've always wanted... I wanted to give people joy. "
Ellsworth Kelly
People
Joy
Give
" Time has always been very important in my work. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Always
Been
Important
" Each drawing that I've done, I have found. Meaning, I see a plant I want to draw. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Plant
Meaning
See
" 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
" I always felt that a painted edge between two colors was a depiction somehow. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Always
Two
Felt
" 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 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
" The negative is just as important as the positive. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Negative
Just
Positive
" 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
" 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 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. "
Ellsworth Kelly
Better
Paint
Oil
" 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
" 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