To paint is to know how to put nothing on canvas, and have it look like something when you stand back.
In certain books – some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother.
There is nothing more entertaining than to have a frank talk with yourself. Few do it-frankly. Educating yourself is getting acquainted with yourself.
After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art.
The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art.
Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says ‘My crowd doesn’t run that way.’ I say, don’t run with crowds.
To be free, to be happy and to be fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.
Through art, mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them.
Concentrate on a single feature – as, build all toward one eye – make all lines lead toward that eye.
Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad.
The pictures which do not represent an intense interest cannot expect to create an intense interest.
I have heard it very often said that an artist does not need intelligence, that his is the province of the soul.
In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don’t believe any real artist cares whether what he does is ‘art’ or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?
Art need not be intended. It comes inevitably as the tree from the root, the branch from the trunk, the blossom from the twig. None of these forget the present in looking backward or forward. They are occupied wholly with the fulfillment of their own existence.
Your only hope of satisfying others is in satisfying yourself. I speak of a great satisfaction, not a commercial satisfaction.
The more simply you see, the more simply you will render. People see too much, scatteringly.
Those who cannot begin do not finish.
Whatever you feel or think your exact state at the exact moment of your brush touching the canvas is in some way registered in that stroke.
Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life’s experience.
There is only one reason for art in America, and that is that the people of America learn the means of expressing themselves in their own time, and their own land.
The artist should be intoxicated with the idea of the thing he wants to express.