Jerry Pinkney Quotes

#1. I never demonstrate how art should be made or what the outcome should look like. Instead, give kids the tools and the materials to make their own art. Have them experience the process.

Jerry Pinkney

#2. Every life has dark tracts and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas.

Alexander MacLaren

#3. We live in a time when there is an abundance of ways we can express ourselves.

Jerry Pinkney

#4. It is God's world still. It has been given to man not absolutely, but in trust, that man may work out in it the will of God; given-may we not say?-just as a father gives a child a corner of his great garden, and says, "There, that is yours; now cultivate it."

Phillips Brooks

#5. I try not to respond with a pep talk, such as, "Everyone has talent, just try, you'll see." I skirt those kinds of answers.

Jerry Pinkney

#6. Make it all about the work. Everything else will follow.

Jerry Pinkney

#7. I want kids to understand that making pictures is similar to making music; there are so many instruments and so many tunes that the possibilities for how you play are truly limitless.

Jerry Pinkney

#8. I visited the Museum of Modern Art and viewed the exhibition of Picasso's sculptures, and I couldn't help but think about what it would be like to have a room full of school children explore Picasso's approach to making art.

Jerry Pinkney

#9. I do think it's important to expose kids to artists.

Jerry Pinkney

#10. If I were to give myself a pat on the back, it would be for sticking with bookmaking as my primary way of expressing myself over the span of fifty years.

Jerry Pinkney

#11. Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.

Seneca The Younger

#12. Receiving both the Coretta Scott King - Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award suggests I have succeeded, at least in terms of my own goals, in my intent to make art that moves children.

Jerry Pinkney

#13. Meekness is one of the brightest graces which can adorn the Christian character.

J.C. Ryle

#14. I've always felt that if I worked hard enough and continued to refine my craft, while staying curious about our times and our world, I just might have something to contribute.

Jerry Pinkney

#15. A sense of community has always been important to me. I understood very early that I could not grow as an artist or as a person without being connected to institutions and clients that served the community.

Jerry Pinkney

#16. There is a ... matter - much more valuable and divine than natural philosophy ... On this matter I must speak to you in enigmas.

Plato

#17. I wanted to show that an African-American artist could make it in this country on a national level in the graphic arts. I want to be a strong role model for my family and for other African Americans.

Jerry Pinkney