21 Quotes by Jessica Stockholder

Handmade things tend to be so expensive that only a small part of the population can afford them. And yet making things with hands is such an essential part of being human.

The very formal, beautiful, composed order that I make with paint and color is freighted with objects, but like leaves falling from a tree onto a lawnmower below, the edges of this 'thing' have a certain serendipity.

Pictures often sit inside of pictures, but the edges of pictures and objects are rarely subjected to serious challenge; we are presented with distinct, whole pictures and objects.

Looking at younger artists, like Varda Caivano and Kerstin Bratsch, I see that their work has something in common that is new to my generation. There's an effort to value the evidence of the hand and the handmade thing while also acknowledging the way in which the making of things with hands has such a complex, alienated place in our culture.

I love the way painting is so full of illusionistic possibilities.

It doesn't matter what I use. It can be anything. What's interesting is how what I'm doing meets with the stuff I use.

Paint is the skin of a painting: it is fiction. In houses, it disguises the plumbing and wiring and studs and nails.

I've always loved color because it's a little bit like music. I love that it seems to be both physical and ephemeral and engages us as a metaphor for our feeling lives.

My work participates in that really quick and easy and inexpensive material that's part of our culture. In that way, my work engages the means of production that we live with, even while it's classical and embodies some things from a very long time ago.