Quotes from Zoe Leonard

By nature, I'm a little distractible. I get very overwhelmed by the world.

I was really poor for most of my adult life.

I don't quite understand how a generation and a half after the Second World War we've gotten where we are now.

I never heard the term "art world" until I was in my thirties, and I was like, "What are you guys talking about?" It's the world, and we all live in the world!

I'm in all of my work, and there's nowhere to hide when you make work.

I choose to work behind the camera. And I kind of want to make the work and then run away. The presentation of myself really feels complicated for me.

If the work is the horse, a career makes a great cart.

I'm always amazed at how people make work no matter how intense the pressure.

There's a desire for me in the work, even when I'm looking at the past, to be looking from the present. It's to be here now. It's looking in the present tense.

I'll finish a body of work and think, "Okay, I got nothing. That was it. I'm done." And then you'll turn a corner and be like, "Oh my God!" And it keeps happening. I feel so lucky.