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.
You will never draw the sense of a thing unless you are feeling it at the time you work.
Count on big lines to express your ideas.
Don’t stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit.
You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you.
Art is an extension of language – an expression of sensations too subtle for words.
The real artist’s work is a surprise to himself.
There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body.
Everything depends on the attitude of the artist toward his subject. It is essential.
Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read, study and think a great deal of life...
Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.
Art tends toward balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living – very good things for anyone to be interested in.
Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out.