When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything.
Interpretation
The act of drawing is essential to creativity and expression.
Ellsworth Kelly emphasizes the importance of drawing as a foundational aspect of artistic creation. He perceives a blank canvas as an opportunity to bring ideas to life, suggesting that the act of creating something from nothing is a powerful and transformative experience.
In practice
Using this quote during an art class to inspire students to explore their creativity.
Everything that I saw became something to be made, and it had to be exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom: there was no longer the need to compose. The subject was there already made, and I could take from everything. It all belonged to me: a glass roof of a factory, with its broken and patched panels, lines on a road map, a corner of a Braque painting, paper fragments in the street. It was all the same: anything goes.
Though, technically, I'm shooting on location, my films are actually based inside a woman's heart. I think women are more emotional than men, and that's a thread I've explored in all my films. When I see TV these days, I'm shocked at how all the main women characters are portrayed as evil. Women are the foundation of everything, and they deserve to be treated that way on camera.
It's never been seen that a street artist go as far as I've gone - keep consistent without wanting to do a bunch of ventures outside of music to keep my face out there.
Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to college; a newspaper photograph of war; a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors.
As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself ... All of which I've earned a living doing.
When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
I like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.
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