Painting is just like making an after-dinner speech. If you want to be remembered, say one thing and stop.
The ring, the call, the surprise, the shock that you have out-of-doors – be always looking for the unexpected in nature, do not settle to a formula.
Swing a bigger brush – you don’t know what you’re missing.
If you are not going to get a thrill, how can you give someone else one? You must feel the beauty of the thing before you start.
Paint what you see, not what you know.
Be humble about it. Paint the color tones as they come against each other, and make them sing, vibrate. Don’t ask me to look at those self-satisfied, pretty things.
The value of a canvas depends almost entirely on your mental attitude, not on your moral attitude; depends on what kind of a man you are, the way you observe.
Anything under the sun is beautiful if you have the vision. It is the seeing of the thing that makes it so.
Get into the habit of doing what you see, not what you know. Human reason cannot foresee the accidents of out-of-doors.
A sketch has charm because of its truth – not because it is unfinished.
Chase used to say, ‘When you’re looking at your canvas and worrying about it, try to think of your canvas as the reality and the model as the painted thing.’
Man-made things, buildings, boats, etc., we see more decidedly than the other things in a landscape.
By having the big lines of the composition going out of the canvas, your imagination can wander beyond the edge. It will make it seem part of a large composition.
See what you can do with your daring with color and your ignorance mixed with it.
Put variety in white.
It is so much better to make a big thing out of a little subject than to make a little thing out of a big one.
If you look into the past of the successful painter you will find square miles of canvas behind him.
We must all teach ourselves to be fine, to be poets.
Do not let it look as if you reasoned too much. Painting must be impulsive to be worth while.
The world is waiting for men with vision – it is not interested in mere pictures.
Avoid distant views, paint objects close up. If the foreground is well done the distance will take care of itself.