It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist’s ability to see well into what is before him.
Self-acquainta nce is a rare condition.
I can think of no greater happiness than to be clear-sighted and know the miracle when it happens. And I can think of no more real life than the adventurous one of living and liking and exclaiming the things of one’s own time.
Be a warhorse for work and enjoy even the struggle against defeat.
Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money.
The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.
Finished persons are very common – people who are closed up, quite satisfied that there is little more to learn.
The picture that looks as if it were done without an effort may have been a perfect battlefield in its making.
There are people who buy pictures because they were difficult to do, and are done. Such pictures are often only a record of pain and dull perseverance. Great works of art should look as though they were made in joy. Real joy is a tremendous activity, dull drudgery is nothing to it.
Don’t worry about the rejections. Everybody that’s good has gone through it. Don’t let it matter if your works are not “accepted” at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance.
Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing.
Educate yourself. Don’t let me educate you.
To have ideas one must have imagination. To express ideas one must have science.
Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture.
The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.
No work of Art is really ever finished. They only stop at good places.
All manifestations of art are but landmarks in the progress of the human spirit toward a thing but as yet sensed and far from being possessed.
Your style is the way you talk in paint.
The ignorant are to be found as much among the educated as among the uneducated.
Colors are beautiful when they are significant.