A bit of advice, don’t copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.
I sit at my door, smoking a cigarette and sipping my absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world.
A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business.
Why did I hesitate to put all this glory of the sun on my canvas?
Nothing so resembles a daub as a masterpiece.
Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions.
The critics can say stupid things and we can enjoy them, if we have the legitimate feeling of superiority – the satisfaction of a duty accomplished.
But I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself.
Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.
It was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a blue.
Perhaps I have no talent, but all vanity aside – I do not believe that anyone makes an artistic attempt, no matter how small, without having a little – or there are many fools.
With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easitly if you think of something besides technique.
Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth? – photography, once it begins to reproduce colors, and that won’t be long in coming. And yet you want an intelligent man to sweat for months so as to give the illusion he can do something as well as an ingenious little machine can!
In painting one must search rather for suggestion than for description, as is done in music.
I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer.
Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.
I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements.
I must confess that I too am a woman and that I am always prepared to applaud a woman who is more daring than I, and is equal to a man in fighting for freedom of behavior.
In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.
A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.
Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow...