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" 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. "

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" 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

" The negative is just as important as the positive. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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!' "

" Time has always been very important in my work. "

" All my work begins with drawings. "

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

" I don't like mixed colors that much, like plum color or deep, deep colors that are hard to define. "

Ellsworth Kelly

Hard

Define

" 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. "

" I did not want windows, only skylights. I chose my painting wall as it has the best morning light. "

" 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

Ideas

I Can

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

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

" 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. "

" I'm constantly investigating nature - nature, meaning everything. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Shape and color are my two strong things. And by doing this, drawing plants has always led me into my paintings and my sculptures. "

" 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. "

" 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

Trying

Make

" 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. "

" 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 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've always wanted... I wanted to give people joy. "

" 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

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