Chris Ofili Quotes on Art

Chris Ofili is a famous contemporary black British artist. He is best known for his elephant dung works and for winning the Turner Prize in 1998. Famous Chris Ofili works include “No Woman No Cry”, “The Holy Virgin Mary”, “Double Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars” and “Popcorn Shells”.

Mini biography: Born Christopher Ofili on the 10th of October, 1968 in Manchester, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain. His mother was May and his father Michael Ofili. He was married to the Attica Blues trip hop band singer Roba El-Essawy between 2002 and 2019. The artist lives and works in the Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

List of Chris Ofili Art Quotes

The idea of a commission felt a bit of a dead end. Like being caged in to do someone else’s idea. Chris Ofili

You can work through ideas and some ideas you can borrow from outside but ultimately you are left with who you are and what you are prepared to accept. Chris Ofili

Changing locations heightens visual awareness; suddenly everything has different values. Since I left England, it’s been a relief really; it’s been like leaving behind what I was and restarting the engine. Chris Ofili

To spend two and a half years moving thread around when you can get an image on your iPhone in milliseconds speaks to a different idea of time. It becomes a life choice. How many are you really going to make in a lifetime? (talking about tapestry making) Chris Ofili

There’s nothing like walking into someone’s studio and seeing a painting for the first time. You get that rush of information coming at you, unmediated. The less you know beforehand, the purer the read. Chris Ofili

For a while I did feel that the work was getting darker and I resisted it because I associated it with a kind of negativity. But more recently I’ve become more comfortable with making work that comes from being in Trinidad and the feeling when you are here, and this has allowed me to experiment more. Chris Ofili

I did like the idea of having only paint and a surface. And I think it is working for me. I am not that interested in the question of whether I am making better things than I was. Chris Ofili

Trinidad is very close to New York in terms of the time zone so if I want to get an injection of great art then I can go there and go to the Met or MoMA or the Frick. Chris Ofili

I wouldn’t say even that I’m a broadly political person. But on occasion I have felt that I have no choice but to paint something with a strong moral stance. The paintings now at Tate Britain, No Woman No Cry and Blue Devils, they are my Eric Bristow-type attempts to hit the bullseye of things that were going on. Chris Ofili

Often I look at my paintings and I don’t know if they feel like the present day, if the time that I’m living in now is actually the time that I’m painting. Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili Self Portrait

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