Julie Mehretu Quotes

#1. The erasure itself became the action. It seemed to suggest a moment in terms of how sad or pessimistic you can feel in a political environment or a historical situation. But it felt like a really hopeful gesture in the painting.

Julie Mehretu

#2. I'm really interested in the nondefinitive element of abstraction.

Julie Mehretu

#3. I'm not trying to spell out a story. I still think you feel the painting, and the reason you read the mark is because you also feel the mark.

Julie Mehretu

#4. I always wanted to be an artist, but I didn't really know how someone could make a life out it.

Julie Mehretu

#5. When you're not a mom, you can get up in the middle of the night, paint, sleep all morning ... you can't do that when you have two children!

Julie Mehretu

#6. I don't ever work in a way where something is an illustration of an event, but when something is occurring at the same time I see it as very informed by that.

Julie Mehretu

#7. That's what I'm interested in: the space in between, the moment of imagining what is possible and yet not knowing what that is.

Julie Mehretu

#8. Race always comes up in the conversation of Detroit.

Julie Mehretu

#9. You're not just this person who's from your own specific experiences, but the collective experience of what makes you who you are because of time.

Julie Mehretu