…Quilting was a method of artistic expression that could also be used to cover people, to keep them warm, but which also put designs together to make… - Faith Ringgold

[I realized] I can’t tell your story, I can only tell mine. I can’t be you, I can only be me.

Political people don’t seem to understand art…It’s not what they’re trying to do. And if it is, let them do that. Don’t tell me what to do, because I have to look at this many years from now and be happy that I did it, not unhappy. And I would be unhappy with the ‘Kill whitey.’ It’s not my thing.

I was encouraged to look around me and to paint what I saw. I painted my story, and it had a lot of angles to it. I was trying to explain how I saw life as a black person living in America, and I put things together that were not acceptable. A lot of people did not want these kind of paintings representing America in any sense, but I wanted to tell my story and what I saw…