For loneliness, worries, difficulties, the unsatisfied need for kindness and sympathy – that is what is hard to bear...
Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and continuous observations. By persistent, I mean not only continuous work, but also not giving up your opinion at the bidding of such and such a person.
Christ is more of an artist than the artists; he works in the living spirit and the living flesh, he makes men instead of statues.
I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.
In order to work and to become an artist one needs love. At least, one who wants sentiment in his work must in the first place feel it himself, and live with his heart.
In trees, I see expression and soul.
It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one’s youth.
Don’t lose heart if it’s very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes.
If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it.
That I was not suited to commerce or academic study in no way proves that I should also be unfit to be a painter.
Painting is a faith and that it brings with it the duty to pay no heed to public opinion – and that in it one conquers by perseverance and not by giving in.
I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.
Whoever lives sincerely and encounters much trouble and disappointment without being bowed down is worth more than one who has always sailed before the wind and has only known prosperity.
I wanted to make people think of a totally different way of living from that which we, educated people, live. I would absolutely not want anyone to find it beautiful or good without a thought.
I know for sure that I have an instinct for color, and that it will come to me more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.
What a simple thing death is, just as simple as the falling of an autumn leaf.
One can never study nature too much and too hard.
I use color in a completely arbitrary way in order to express myself powerfully.
Often whole days pass without my speaking to anyone.
The worse I get along with people the more I learn to have faith in Nature and concentrate on her.