Best quotes by James Turrell on Light

Checkout quotes by James Turrell on Light

• ‟ This wonderful elixir of light is the thing that actually connects the immaterial with the material - that connects the cosmic to the plain everyday existence that we try to live in.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ It is only when light is reduced that the pupil opens and feeling goes out of the eyes like touch.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ Light itself is a revelation.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ I like to use light as a material, but my medium is actually perception. I want you to sense yourself sensing - to see yourself seeing.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ Light knows when you're looking at it.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ In a way, light unites the spiritual world and the ephemeral, physical world. People frequently talk about spiritual experiences using the vocabulary of light: Saul on the road to Damascus, near-death experiences, samadhi or the light-filled void of Buddhist enlightenment.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ I don't want you looking at the light fixture; I want you looking at where light goes. But more than that, I'm interested in the effect of light upon you and your perceptions.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ I look at light as a material. It is physical. It is photons. Yes, it exhibits wave behavior, but it is a thing.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ I wanted to deal with light directly rather than with paint.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ If you think about art, if you look at Rembrandt and Vermeer and Caravaggio, if you look at Turner and Constable and all the Impressionists and the Hudson River School, there's a tradition of light in art, especially painting.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ There are very few religious experiences that aren't explained using the vocabulary of light.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ I don't know if I believe in art. I certainly believe in light.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ This idea that light plays an important part in our life is important to me.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ Each day is a different length of time and that gives a different length to the cusp between light and darkness or darkness and light.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ Generally, we use light to illuminate other things. I like the thingness, the materiality of light itself. So it feels like it's occupying the space, making a plane, being something that was there, not just passing through. Because light is just passing through. I make these spaces that seem to arrest it for our perception.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ There's truth in light. You can tell what elements a star is composed of and the temperature at which it burns by the light it gives off.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ At my first exhibits, people were saying that's just a light on the wall.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ I feel that I want to use light as this wonderful and magic elixir that we drink as Vitamin D through the skin - and I mean, we are literally light-eaters - to then affect the way that we see.

  - James Turrell
  

• ‟ If you take blue paint and yellow paint and you mix them, you get green paint. But if you take blue light and yellow light and mix them, you get white light. This is a shock to most people.

  - James Turrell