The paintings to me are always canvas; sculpture has always been metal, though I have made sculpture in wood, also. Ellsworth Kelly Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I don’t like mixed colors that much, like plum color or deep, deep colors that are hard to define. Ellsworth Kelly Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
