Jerry Pinkney Quotes

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

All of us have places that we can go where we feel most complete.

I’m often in conversations with people who have learning disabilities, and they talk about how they were teased and perhaps laughed at sometimes as children. That was never the case with me. Maybe it was something about my personality, my temperament, but I don’t ever remember being teased. I remember the awkwardness of leaving class to go to a special class, but that’s all.

Drawing creates its own kind of private space. Coupled with certain interests that I want to speak to in my art, it’s really kind of a safe haven for me. Creating art is not only a comfort zone, but also a way of speaking to my passions.

I like to talk about my challenges as they relate to all of us, and I try to leave them with a sense of what it feels like to succeed at something and to arrive at a goal. I talk a lot about finding that thing that you feel is important to you, that’s your calling, and about the reward you will get from staying with it, no matter what the challenges are.

Part of what I’m doing with generations is that I try to express in my work pieces of my growing up years that I can look back on with great fondness – specifically, a sense of family.

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.

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

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.

African American writers and artists, by the very nature of what they do, will actually enhance or bring together people in a way that might be very, very healthy.

I’ve tried to use the recognition as validation that I’m doing the kind of work that people are interested in and to feel that my work is a contribution.

I have to believe that when I finish a project, that I will not only grow as an artist, but as a person.