Mark Bradford Quotes
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My mom was a free spirit, and she brought me up to be a free spirit.
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Tobacco and religious organisations.
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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.
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In North America, what happens often is that they put race before nationhood. Everyone here is Hispanic-American, Chinese-American, African-American. But really, we're just North Americans of all these different descents. The only time I notice North Americans becoming national is when a war happens or a crisis happens.
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I figure if you have one person that loves you, that's enough, growing up. You just need one person in your corner.
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I'd say right now that moderate damage was sustained. The businesses down here below have significant damage.
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I have always been interested in people who live outside of the fabric of the norm.
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The freeways create economic and racial borders in Los Angeles. South of Interstate 10 is one group of people, west of the 10 another, and south of the 405 North yet another.
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I look at art as a container. You can't get inside it, so you have to ask all of these questions.
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My mom was an orphan, and there was never anybody to tell her what she could or couldn't do. At the core, she's probably an artist - an artist and a feminist.
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My art practice is very detail-, labor- intensive and I think that that's a way of slowing myself down so that I can hear myself think. That quieter voice has sometimes the more interesting idea, if I can get to it.
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Generally, when I tell people I'm a painter, they ask me if I have a card: 'Yes, we'd like this room in this color.' I still might get cards that say 'Mark Bradford. Painter.'
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I always made stuff but never thought, I'm going to be an artist.
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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.
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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.'
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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.
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I just follow the things I'm interested in. That's always guided me. If I'm interested in something, that's where I go.
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I can go to my own opening, and the security guard will tell me that I have to go to the security entrance.