James Turrell

I wanted to deal with light directly rather than with paint.

It is only when light is reduced that the pupil opens and feeling goes out of the eyes like touch.

I feel that I want to use light as this wonderful and magic elixir that we drink as Vitamin D through the skin - and I mean, we are literally light-eaters - to then affect the way that we see.

In many cases, if we knew what it would take, we might have thought twice about it, so it's often wonderful that we don't have hindsight.

There are different stages when you fly. The first stage is the dollhouse effect, seeing everything on Earth like it's a model. Suddenly, all of your concerns seem very small.

Space has a way of looking. It seems like it has a presence of vision. When you come into it, it is there, it’s been waiting for you.

I'm known as a light artist. But rather than be someone who depicted light, or painted light in some way, I wanted to have the work be light.

I am involved in the architecture of space.

From the very beginning, I was very interested just in light, and art seemed to be a way to work with it.

If you take blue paint and yellow paint and you mix them, you get green paint. But if you take blue light and yellow light and mix them, you get white light. This is a shock to most people.

I don't know if I believe in art. I certainly believe in light.

We're part of creating this world in which we live, but we're unaware of how we do that or even that we do that.

Nowhere in the job description of an artist is the requirement that I must validate your taste.

There are very few religious experiences that aren't explained using the vocabulary of light.

Generally, we use light to illuminate other things. I like the thingness, the materiality of light itself. So it feels like it's occupying the space, making a plane, being something that was there, not just passing through. Because light is just passing through. I make these spaces that seem to arrest it for our perception.

I feel that buildings often have a workaday aspect that you see during the daylight hours, and a more resplendent side that emerges after dark.

One way to understand light in the ocean of air is by flying it. Life in the air is an extension of perceiving.

I want people to treasure light.

I am interested in the physicality of light itself.

I feel my work is made for one being, one individual. You could say that's me, but that's not really true. It's for an idealized viewer.

We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.