56 Quotes by Mark Bradford

When I was thirteen, I was in a supermarket with my mother, and for no reason at all, I picked up a science-fiction book at the checkout stand and started reading it. I couldn't believe I was doing that, actually reading a book. And, man, it opened up a whole new thing. Reading became the sparkplug of my imagination.

You either have to find a way to be really creative materially, or you better have a trust fund. And, last I checked, I didn't have a trust fund.

Everything I do has an underlying political question.

Bergh played a great defensive game, she's all over the place. Jessica makes sure everybody is in the right place.

At the end of the day, I'm an artist. I may make work and decide to do something political, but it will come out of an artist's position. It won't come out of society telling me I have to. If I do, it's because I choose, as an artist, to do it.

The sheer density of advertising creates a psychic mass, an overlay that can sometimes be very tense or aggressive. As a citizen, you have to participate in that every day. You have to walk by until it's changed.

The three occupants that we were looking for we believe we have, in fact, found.

I've always been inspired by small details that make me wander. My mother would ask me, 'What are you looking at so intensely?' I would answer, 'Everything and nothing.' She really supported my wanderings, called me Marco Polo.

The narrative oftentimes is that everything that comes out of the hood is 'real,' and so I thought, 'I'll base it on the absurd, the not real. I'll twist the idea of real on its head and see if I can get away with it. I'll make paintings that come not from a place but through an abstract gaze.'