Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.
Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves.
Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.
Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.
Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy.
It’s a wrong idea that a master is a finished person. Masters are very faulty; they haven’t learned everything and they know it.
To paint is to know how to put nothing on canvas, and have it look like something when you stand back.
We are not here to do what has already been done.
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.