Kiki Smith Quotes

Quotes about:

• The point isn't to know what you're doing. The point is to have an experience doing something.

  Kiki Smith

  Knows

  45 Copy quote

• Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions.

  Kiki Smith

  Art, Thinking, Creating

  91 Copy quote

• I like that feeling when you’re making art, that you’re taking the energy out of your body and putting it into a physical object. I like things that are labor-intensive : you make a little thing and another little thing and another little thing, and eventually you see a possibility.

  Kiki Smith

  Art, Feelings, Energy

  Siri Engberg, Kiki Smith, Linda Nochlin, Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005). “Kiki Smith: a gathering, 1980-2005”

  54 Copy quote

• Art is a reflection of everything that impacts your life.

  Kiki Smith

  Art, Reflection, Impact

  Source: crushfanzine.com

  17 Copy quote

• I trust my work. It's a collaboration with the material, and when it's viewed, it's a collaboration with the world.

  Kiki Smith

  Collaboration, World, Working It

  Siri Engberg, Kiki Smith, Linda Nochlin, Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005). “Kiki Smith: a gathering, 1980-2005”

  32 Copy quote

• You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I'm given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one's own vision.

  Kiki Smith

  Grace, Kitchen, Vision

  52 Copy quote

• Making art is a lot about just seeing what happens if you put some energy into something.

  Kiki Smith

  Art, Energy, Happens

  26 Copy quote

• Our culture seems to believe that it's entertaining to teach women to be frightened.

  Kiki Smith

  Believe, Culture, Frightened

  26 Copy quote

• I think making things beautiful is important. But often what's first considered ugly is beautiful, too.

  Kiki Smith

  Beautiful, Art, Thinking

  Siri Engberg, Kiki Smith, Linda Nochlin, Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005). “Kiki Smith: a gathering, 1980-2005”

  32 Copy quote

• Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.

  Kiki Smith

  Artist, Space, Giving

  27 Copy quote

• Prints mimic what we are as humans: we are all the same and yet every one is different. I think there's a spiritual power in repetition, a devotional quality, like saying rosaries.

  Kiki Smith

  Spiritual, Thinking, Quality

  25 Copy quote

• If you stick to your work it will take care of you somehow.

  Kiki Smith

  Determination, Care, Sticks

  15 Copy quote

• I always thought it was a trap to fit into ideologies, and maybe that's a luxury position, but my work is a reflection of my being here. My being here is not a reflection of an idea.

  Kiki Smith

  Reflection, Ideas, Luxury

  Source: crushfanzine.com

  4 Copy quote

• One's self is always shifting in relationship to beauty and you always have to be able to incorporate yourself or your new self into life. Like your skin starts hanging off your arms and stuff, and then you have to think, well that's really beautiful too. It just isn't beautiful in a way that I knew it was beautiful before.

  Kiki Smith

  Beautiful, Thinking, Self

  27 Copy quote

• I think a lot of making art is listening to yourself.

  Kiki Smith

  Art, Thinking, Listening

  4 Copy quote

• One hopes that each piece contains enough space for several narratives.

  Kiki Smith

  Space, Pieces, Narrative

  25 Copy quote

• We as beings are very contradictory, complicated creatures that work in our best interest and against our best interest. In a certain way, I want my work to have all that messiness.

  Kiki Smith

  Want, Way, Complicated

  Source: crushfanzine.com

  4 Copy quote

• When you get older, you're running out of time. You care more about trying to stay on the planet a little longer, so you can learn how to draw better!

  Kiki Smith

  Running, Trying, Littles

  Source: crushfanzine.com

  4 Copy quote

• It's fun, in a way, to explore what's risky in one's life.

  Kiki Smith

  Fun, Way

  18 Copy quote

• It’s one of my loose theories that Catholicism and art have gone well together because both believe in the physical manifestation of the spiritual world.

  Kiki Smith

  Spiritual, Art, Believe

  "Learning by Looking - Witches, Catholicism, and Buddhist Art". Art21 Interview, art21.org.

  23 Copy quote

• Life really changes. And it gets lighter, for the most part. You tolerate yourself and others better.

  Kiki Smith

  Tolerate, Lighters

  Source: crushfanzine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I told the students [at Yale] we were going to talk about love - I meant love in the sense of devotions to one's work - and about half the students got really pissed off.

  Kiki Smith

  Yale, Pissed Off, Half

  21 Copy quote

• As an artist, you want to have an experience. What you need to experience changes over the course of your life because your life changes.

  Kiki Smith

  Life Changing, Artist, Needs

  Source: crushfanzine.com

  11 Copy quote

• The point of art is that it always has the necessity to expand because people are inherently expanding.

  Kiki Smith

  Art, People, Expanding

  Source: crushfanzine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I got into animals by drawing hair follicles. I liked drawing hair, and from that I got into feathers and fur, then into images of animals. The patterning is the same, but the proportions of the body change from one animal to the next. A lot of it is just geometry and consciousness.

  Kiki Smith

  Animal, Hair, Drawing

  14 Copy quote

Page 1 of 3

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin