Personal experimentation is revealing, and once you get into it, immensely engaging.
Many receive a criticism and think it is fine; think they got their money’s worth; think well of the teacher for it, and then go on with their work just the same as before. That is the reason much of the wisdom of Plato is still locked up in the pages of Plato.
All outward success, when it has value, is but the inevitable result of an inward success of full living, full play and enjoyment of one’s faculties.
If you think of a school drawing while you work, your drawing will look like one.
If you work from memory, you are most likely to put in your real feeling.
Self-education only produces expressions of self.
Manet did not do the expected. He was a pioneer. He followed his individual whim. Told the public what he wanted it to know, not the time worn things the public already knew and thought it wanted to hear again. The public was very much offended.
Perhaps whatever there is in my work that may be really interesting to others and surely what is interesting to me, is the result of a sometimes successful effort to free myself from any idea that what I produce must be art...
It seems to me that before a man tries to express anything to the world he must recognize in himself an individual, a new one, very distinct from others.
A picture should be the expression of the will of the painter.
Do not expect pictures to say the expected; some of the best will have surprises for you, which will, at first, shock you.
Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure.
Work always as if you were a master, expect from yourself a masterpiece.
There are forms that can only be seen when you are near a painting, others only appear when you are far away.
I am interested in the size of your intention. It is better to overstate the important than to understate it.
All education must be self-education.
Students work in schools making life studies for years, win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy.
A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.
Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.
Realize that a drawing is not a copy. It is a construction in very different materials. A drawing is an invention.