Kara Walker famous quotes

04-24-2025

There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artistâ€”it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist.
-- Kara Walker

#Artist #Doctors #World
A lot of my work has been about the unexpectedâ€”that kind of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time. That kind of dilemmaâ€”that push and pullâ€”is the underlying turbulence that I bring to each of the pieces that I make.
-- Kara Walker

#Pieces #Unexpected #Kind
I didnâ€™t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldnâ€™t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful
-- Kara Walker

#Beautiful #Art #Mean
One of my earliest memories involves sitting on my dadâ€™s lap in his studio in the garage of our house and watching him draw. I remember thinking: â€˜I want to do that, too,â€™ and I pretty much decided then and there at age 2Â½ or 3 that I was an artist just like Dad.
-- Kara Walker

#Memories #Dad #Artist
Sugar crystallizes something in our American Soul. It is emblematic of all Industrial Processes. And of the idea of becoming white. White Being equated with pure and â€˜trueâ€™ it takes a lot of energy to turn brown things into white things. A lot of pressure.
-- Kara Walker

#Ideas #White #Soul
I think really the whole problem with racism and its continuing legacy in this country is that we simply love it. Who would we be without the 'struggle?'
-- Kara Walker

#Country #Struggle #Thinking
Silhouettes are reductions, and racial stereotypes are also reductions of actual human beings.
-- Kara Walker

#Silhouettes #Stereotype #Reduction
Im not really about blackness, per se, but about blackness and whiteness, and what they mean and how they interact with one another and what power is all about.
-- Kara Walker

#Mean #Whiteness #Blackness
If you're a Black artist, you could paint a wall of smiley faces, and someone will still ask you, 'Why are you so angry?'
-- Kara Walker

#Wall #Artist #Black
I don't think that my work is actually effectively dealing with history. I think of my work as subsumed by history or consumed by history.
-- Kara Walker

#Thinking
I often compare my method of working to that of a well-meaning freed woman in a Northern state who is attempting to delineate the horrors of Southern slavery but with next to no resources, other than some paper and a pen knife and some people she'd like to kill
-- Kara Walker

#Knives #People #Southern
The silhouette says a lot with very little information, but that's also what the stereotype does.
-- Kara Walker

#Doe #Littles #Information

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