Faith Ringgold

Ringgold in 2017

Faith Ringgold (October 8, 1930 – April 13, 2024) was a painter, writer, mixed media sculptor and performance artist.

Quotes

• [I realized] I can’t tell your story, I can only tell mine. I can’t be you, I can only be me.
  • On her artistic development in “The Storyteller: At 85, Her Star Still Rising, Faith Ringgold Looks Back on Her Life in Art, Activism, and Education” in ArtNews (March 1, 2006)
• 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.
  • On not creating politically incendiary artwork for the Black Panthers in “The Storyteller: At 85, Her Star Still Rising, Faith Ringgold Looks Back on Her Life in Art, Activism, and Education” in ArtNews (March 1, 2006)

• 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…
  • On the Civil Rights Movement puncturing the image of the American Dream in [1] in The Art Newspaper (June 5, 2019)

• …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 them beautiful…
  • On the origins of quilting in slavery in [2] in The Art Newspaper (June 5, 2019)

• I think they were a little bit too bold in that I was showing the relationship between black and white people, the struggle for independence and freedom that black people were pursuing during the civil rights era. It was just a little bit too damn much going on. The struggle was one thing when you talk about it, another thing when you picture it. I wanted people also to look at that work and see themselves. Whichever part you were playing, this is what's going on…
  • On her painting subjects in “The Surprising Vision of Artist Faith Ringgold” in NPR (December 26, 2013)