42 Quotes by Chris Ofili

I was listening to a lot of hip hop, music like Public Enemy that was about raising consciousness, and I realised I could feed that directly into my work, using images in a way that was a bit like sampling - taking images from diverse places, exploring the contradictions without trying to hide the seams.

The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what you paint. It’s all just a routine to connect yourself finally with other people.

Sometimes, as I feel a door or an exit point in my work is closing, I’ll try to create an opening so as not to stifle the creative process, which I see as a process that’s never-ending.

I’m aware that success can overwhelm you. The perception of you can be elevated to such a status that it’s not you any more.

There’s a magic that comes from playing entirely to who you are. I’ve got my specialist subject – in the Mastermind sense – and I wouldn’t change it, or who I am.

The studio is a place where I can experiment before I’m prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time.

Often I think changes within my work have been seen as sudden changes or sharp changes, but for me they’re not that sudden. They have been there in the studio, but not so much in public.

Doubt is important because it suggests progress. Total certainty can mean there's no assessment of things. Doubt, if you don't panic, can allow newness to come in and challenge something that's an established mode.