I want to get to the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply.
I’ll start with small things.
Do not become the slave of your model.
I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.
I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.
I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say “he feels deeply, he feels tenderly”.
One can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music.
How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.
As you can see, I am immersing myself in color-I’ve held back from that until now; and I don’t regret it.
The great artist is the simplifier.
The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.
Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.
What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.
It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill – it’s a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I’m all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I’ll always remain half crazy.
The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.
Describing Starry Night: Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up remained.
I’ve just kept on ceaselessly painting in order to learn painting.
For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.
I do not know myself how I paint it. I sit down with a white board before the spot that strikes me. I look at what is before my eyes, and say to myself, that white board must become something.
Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.