I have been painting models with black and brown skin only for the past years. So, I did already have this experience, this is how I have come to the paintings I do now. Kehinde Wiley More Quotes by Kehinde Wiley More Quotes From Kehinde Wiley If I were making paintings of a bowl of fruit it would still be viewed through some sort of political lens, because the viewer wants to create a type of narrative around the political theme when they look at work depicting black and brown models. Kehinde Wiley black political want Like, the smells and the sights and the sounds. As an artist, you want to sort of be able to engage that and get that down in some way. This is - this is a type of familiarity but a type of radical difference at the same time. Kehinde Wiley smell artist sight I think, something that you might be able to locate in the work that I'm creating today: the ability to look at a black America as something that not only can be mined in a very sort of cynical, cold way, but also embraced in a very personal, love-driven way; but also sort of critiqued. Kehinde Wiley creating america thinking My mother's from Texas. Small town outside of Waco called Downsville. And my father's from Nigeria. And so I guess I'm properly African-American. Kehinde Wiley texas mother father There is no pedestrian culture [in South Central Los Angeles]. Kehinde Wiley pedestrians los-angeles culture I was surrounded by art by virtue of not only the educational opportunities that my mother's foresight availed me to. Kehinde Wiley educational mother art There was no image of the other biological half of myself. And as an artists, as a - as an - as a portraitist, the look of who you are was radically important to me. Kehinde Wiley important artist looks I think that once you're able to sort of get in line with who and how you relate to the world, you'll become closer to this index that I'm referring to. Because what you want is this card that relates to that book. What you want is this human that relates to this world, rather than having this art school society scattering that point of view somewhere in between. It becomes diffused. And that level of clarity, I think, was gained at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Kehinde Wiley book art school At age 20 I went to go find my father in Nigeria. And after much toil, I finally figured out exactly where he was. And there's something about seeing your father for the first time - my mother destroyed all pictures of him. Kehinde Wiley age mother father It was something that came sort of matter-of-factually. Because there - it's like really - real honest engagement with the people around me and just like really honestly being a little bit confused, quite frankly, about Harlem. Kehinde Wiley confused real people I went back to my mother's house recently and I saw some of my earlier works as a 15-year-old art student. And a lot of them were reiterations of classic works. Kehinde Wiley mother years art There's always a joy in newness as a painter, and in sub-Saharan Africa, I encountered different realities with regard to light and how it bounces across the skin. The way that blues and purples come into play. In India and Sri Lanka, it was no different. It became a moment in which I had an opportunity to learn as a painter how to create the body in full form, and that's a very material and aesthetic thing. This is not conceptual. It's all an abstraction. Kehinde Wiley light opportunity reality My paintings at their best take that vocabulary and attempt to transpose that into a form that gives respect not only to the history of painting but also to those people who look and sound like me. Kehinde Wiley vocabulary giving people I think it's possible to allow an artist to go beyond his borders and play. Kehinde Wiley artist play thinking I like to play with the conventions around what we expect of paintings historically. But I also like to play with the conventions that you expect from a Kehinde Wiley painting, too. Kehinde Wiley conventions painting play While it may seem a little mundane, the material realities of realizing the painting actually have a lot to do with how you should read the painting. For example, we assume that what the model is wearing is what we found him in in the streets. No; in fact, a lot of what happens is that in Photoshop certain aspects are being heightened or diminished. There is no actual material truth in these paintings. Kehinde Wiley example may reality One of the weirdest things that happened to artists and art criticism was this moment when everyone got cynical and stopped believing in the ability to engage the world in all of its myriad purposes, transformations, and incarnations. Kehinde Wiley cynical believe art People who - and I think that's been a huge education for me. I think it's a - it's a privilege to be able to meet such a broad cross-section of New York and increasingly the world, and to get a feel of how people respond to visual culture. Kehinde Wiley new-york people thinking My studio practice is a - I suppose a bit more like [Thomas] Gainsborough or [Peter Paul] Rubens in the sense that any artist who wants to create a grand narrative on a grand scale has to sort of parse out some of the smaller aspects of painting or the more mundane aspects of painting to others. Kehinde Wiley artist practice want While I can hire out the portrait, I don't, because it's just - that's where I shine. You know, that's my blood sport. Kehinde Wiley shining sports blood
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