A Quote by James Turrell

[My work] is using light as a material to influence or affect the medium of perception. 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

Quote Topics

Affect Drink Elixir Feel Influence Light Literally Magic Material Mean Medium Perception See Skin Then Through Use Using Vitamin D Want Way Wonderful Work

Quote Author

James Turrell
American - Artist
Born: May 6, 1943

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

The scale of light can be described by numbers called the frequency and as the numbers get higher, the light goes from red to blue to ultraviolet. We can't see ultraviolet light, but it can affect photographic plates. It's still light only the number is different.

Richard P. Feynman

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

"It is light that reveals, light that obscures, light that communicates. It is light I "listen" to. The light late in the day has a distinct quality, as it fades toward the darkness of evening. After sunset there is a gentle leaving of the light, the air begins to still, and a quiet descends. I see magic in the quiet light of dusk. I feel quiet, yet intense energy in the natural elements of our habitat. A sense of magic prevails. A sense of mystery. It is a time for contemplation, for listening - a time for making photographs. "

John Sexton

We eat light, drink it in through our skins. With a little more exposure to light, you feel part of things physically. I like feeling the power of light and space physically because then you can order it materially. Seeing is a very sensuous act-there's a sweet deliciousness to feeling yourself see something.

James Turrell

Shorter daylight hours can affect sleep, productivity and state of mind. Light therapy, also known as phototherapy, may help. It uses light boxes emitting full-spectrum light to simulate sunlight.

Andrew Weil

Solar flares affect our everyday lives in all kinds of mundane ways. They affect satellites, they affect our emotions, and so on, but they also affect the nature of the light that is coming to us, which is kind of the way that the DNA unfolds. And on those levels hardly anyone really understands all of this, and I don't either. I just know that what is going on in the Sun is very important.

Drunvalo Melchizedek

I always wanted to make a light that looks like the light you see in your dream. Because the way that light infuses the dream, the way the atmosphere is colored, the way light rains off people with auras and things like that...We don't normally see light like that. But we all know it. So this is no unfamiliar territory - or not unfamiliar light. I like to have this kind of light that reminds us of this other place we know.

James Turrell

First you believe, and then you see the Light. Next you go towards the Light. Soon you are IN the Light. Now you ARE the Light.

Robert Holden

The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light...It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within that great general light of existence.

Marilynne Robinson

I'm known as a light artist. But rather than be someone who depicted light, or painted light in some way, I wanted to have the work be light.

James Turrell

My works are about light in the sense that light is present and there; the work is made of light. It's not about light or a record of it, but it is light. Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself revelation.

James Turrell

Greek architecture taught me that the column is where the light is not, and the space between is where the light is. It is a matter of no-light, light, no-light, light. A column and a column brings light between them. To make a column which grows out of the wall and which makes its own rhythm of no-light, light, no-light, light: that is the marvel of the artist.

Louis Kahn

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

For low light, all the light rays participate. We're using all the light coming through a large aperture to make a picture with a large depth of field - totally impossible with a conventional camera.