"We award the sky its color, we’re quite unaware of this. Because we do, that means I can then change it. I can work something around you that then will change your perception. And I think that artists working with the nature of perception, or how we go about doing this, is also of great importance, because we do have this prejudice of seeing, and many artists are trying to take away that prejudice."

"We drink light."

Chafing at the restrictions imposed by his urban surroundings and ever more ambitious in his desire to link human perception to a wider environment, Turrell decided to move into the desert, where he could more directly connect his studio practice with the phenomena he had discovered while flying. Aided by a Guggenheim grant, he set off in his Helio Courier airplane in search of the site that would become his life’s work.