I think my life has been transformed by the ability to take things that exist in the world and look at them more closely. I think that’s what art does at its best: it allows us to slow down. Kehinde Wiley Read Quote
My interest is in completing an image that is spectacular beyond belief. My fidelity is to the image and the art and not to the bragging rights of making every stroke on every flower. I’m realistic. Kehinde Wiley Read Quote
Art is about changing what we see in our everyday lives and representing it in such a way that it gives us hope. Kehinde Wiley Read Quote
My father is Nigerian; my mother is from Texas and African-American. My father was the first in his family to go to university. He flew from Nigeria to Los Angeles in the ’70s to go to UCLA, where he met my mother. They broke up before I was born, and he returned to Nigeria. Kehinde Wiley Read Quote
My style is in the 21st century. If you look at the process, it goes from photography through Photoshop, where certain features are heightened, elements of the photo are diminished. There is no sense of truth when you’re looking at the painting or the photo or that moment when the photo was first taken. Kehinde Wiley Read Quote
If art can be at the service of anything, it’s about letting us see a state of grace for those people who rarely get to be able to be seen that way. Kehinde Wiley Read Quote
At its best, what art does is, it points to who we as human beings and what we as human beings value. And if Black Lives Matter, they deserve to be in paintings. Kehinde Wiley Read Quote
Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them. Kehinde Wiley Read Quote
If you look at the paintings that I love in art history, these are the paintings where great, powerful men are being celebrated on the big walls of museums throughout the world. What feels really strange is not to be able to see a reflection of myself in that world. Kehinde Wiley Read Quote
The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you. Kehinde Wiley Read Quote
