Faith Ringgold Quotes & Sayings

Creativity helps us realize that we don't have to understand everything. We can enjoy something -feel it and use it- without ever fully comprehending it. — Faith Ringgold

You can't sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it — Faith Ringgold

I had something I was trying to say and sometimes the message is an easy transmission and sometimes it's a difficult one but I love the power of saying it so I'm gonna do it whether it's hard or easy. — Faith Ringgold

No other creative field is as closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing that I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity. — Faith Ringgold

When they're looking at my work, they're looking at a painting and they're able to accept it better because it is also a quilt. — Faith Ringgold

I had this idea that I wanted to do this mixture of visions of African American women and visions of African American men. And call it 'The Men' and call it 'The Women' and show different faces of these two people. — Faith Ringgold

The great enemy of creativity is fear. When we're fearful, we freeze up - like a nine-year-old who won't draw pictures, for fear everybody will laugh. Creativity has a lot to do with a willingness to take risks. Think about how children play. They run around the playground, they trip, they fall, they get up and run some more. They believe everything will be all right. They feel capable; they let go. Good businesspeople behave in a similar way: they lose $15 million, gain $20 million, lose $30 million and earn it back. If that isn't playing, I don't know what is! — Faith Ringgold

I'm not so presumptuous to feel that they're gonna get it right away, get exactly what I have in mind. I hope that they'll enjoy looking at it at any rate, whatever it is. And that's why I started writing stories on my work. — Faith Ringgold

I guess I had fun doing it but it has hard memories for me. — Faith Ringgold

I will always remember
when the stars fell down around me
and lifted me up above
the George Washington Bridge. — Faith Ringgold

Anyone can fly. All you need is somewhere to go that you can't get to any other way. The next thing you know, you're flying among the stars. — Faith Ringgold

I'm not presumptuous enough to feel that people are going to feel what I have in mind, so I tell a story, you know, let them read something, that doesn't change, that as I have said it, you know, so that's the way I feel about the viewer, the viewer has a mind of their own and eyes of their own and they're going to see it their way, I just hope they look. — Faith Ringgold

Less is even less, and more is still not quite enough. — Faith Ringgold

I just feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world being able to do what I love and be able to do it all day every day if I like, you know, I mean it's great, I love it. — Faith Ringgold

I always knew I wanted to be somebody. I think that's where it begins. People decide, "I want to be somebody. I want to make a contribution. I want to leave my mark here." Then different factors contribute to how you will do that. — Faith Ringgold

I am free to go wherever I want for the rest of my life. — Faith Ringgold

I think that has been a benefit to me because I think most people understand quilts and not a lot of people understand paintings. But yet they're looking at one. — Faith Ringgold

Because the mask is your face, the face is a mask, so I'm thinking of the face as a mask because of the way I see faces is coming from an African vision of the mask which is the thing that we carry around with us, it is our presentation, it's our front, it's our face. — Faith Ringgold

I became a feminist because I wanted to help my daughters, other women and myself aspire to something more than a place behind a good man. — Faith Ringgold