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" 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

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

Ellsworth Kelly

" 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

" I like silence. "

Ellsworth Kelly

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

Ellsworth Kelly

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

Ellsworth Kelly

" 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

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

Ellsworth Kelly

" 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

" 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

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

Ellsworth Kelly

" All my work begins with drawings. "

Ellsworth Kelly

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" Geometry is moribund. I want a lilt and joy to art. "

Ellsworth Kelly

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

Ellsworth Kelly

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Ellsworth Kelly

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

Ellsworth Kelly

" 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

" 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

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

Ellsworth Kelly

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

Ellsworth Kelly

" 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

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

Ellsworth Kelly