The man who has honesty integrity the love of inquiry the desire to see beyond is ready to appreciate good art.
Art appreciation like love cannot be done by proxy.
There are forms that can only be seen when you are near a painting others only appear when you are far away.
Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men.
Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes.
To be free to be happy and to be fruitful can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.
Everything depends on the attitude of the artist toward his subject. It is essential.
The pursuit of happiness...is the greatest feat man has to accomplish.
The reason for the survival of the award system is purely commercial.
Art tends toward balance order judgment of relative values the laws of growth the economy of living "? very good things for anyone to be interested in.
The pernicious influence of the prize and medal giving in art is so great that it should be stopped. History proves that juries in art have been generally wrong.
Art is an extension of language - an expression of sensations too subtle for words.
A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw.
No work of Art is really ever finished. They only stop at good places.
Artists must be men of wit consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read study and think a great deal of life...
I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.
Art appreciation like love cannot be done by proxy: It is a very personal affair and is necessary to each individual.
All the past up to a moment ago is your legacy. You have a right to it.
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.
It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him.
Students work in schools making life studies for years win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy.
There is nothing more entertaining than to have a frank talk with yourself. Few do it-frankly. Educating yourself is getting acquainted with yourself.
Good composition is like a suspension bridge - each line adds strength and takes none away.
A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.
By my teaching I hope to inspire you to personal activity and to present your vision.
Work always as if you were a master expect from yourself a masterpiece.
The ignorant are to be found as much among the educated as among the uneducated.
It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.
If the artist's will is not strong he will see all kinds of unessential things.
There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body.
Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.
Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.
Count on big lines to express your ideas.
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.
In certain books"?some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother.
What we need is more sense of the wonder of life and less of this business of making a picture.
Art is after all only a trace "? like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.
A weak background is a deadly thing.
Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.
Educate yourself. Don't let me educate you
The picture that looks as if it were done without an effort may have been a perfect battlefield in its making.
When the artist is alive in any person whatever his kind of work may be he becomes an inventive searching daring self-expressing creature.
Colors are beautiful when they are significant.
Color is only beautiful when it means something.
All is as beautiful as we think it.
All manifestations of art are but landmarks in the progress of the human spirit toward a thing but as yet sensed and far from being possessed.
Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things anything well. It is not an outside extra thing.
It seems to me that before a man tries to express anything to the world he must recognize in himself an individual a new one very distinct from others.
Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad.
In great art there is no beginning and end in point of time. All time is comprehended.
Those who cannot begin do not finish.
Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out.
Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money.
Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.
Finished persons are very common - people who are closed up quite satisfied that there is little more to learn
Your only hope of satisfying others is in satisfying yourself. I speak of a great satisfaction not a commercial satisfaction.
Completion does not depend on material representation. The work is done when that special thing has been said.
Concentrate on a single feature - as build all toward one eye - make all lines lead toward that eye.
Self-acquainta nce is a rare condition.
To paint is to know how to put nothing on canvas and have it look like something when you stand back.
A drawing should be a verdict on the model. Don't confuse a drawing with a map.
Realize that a drawing is not a copy. It is a construction in very different materials. A drawing is an invention.
There is no art without contemplation.
A Curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted with a straight line.
The model is not to be copied but to be realized.
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.
We make our discoveries while in the state [of high functioning] because then we are clear-sighted.
A mountain seen in the haze of distance must nevertheless look a solid heavy mountain.
If you do not act on a suggestion at first you grow dull to its message.
Has your drawing the meaning you saw in the model at first?
If you think of a school drawing while you work your drawing will look like one.
You will never draw the sense of a thing unless you are feeling it at the time you work.
Drawing is not following a line on the model it is drawing your sense of the thing.
Lines are results do not draw them for themselves.
Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture.
Be a warhorse for work and enjoy even the struggle against defeat.
Look for echoes. Sometimes the same shape or direction will echo through the picture.
Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty however difficult it may actually have been.
Feel the dignity of a child. Do not feel superior to him for you are not.
Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.
Develop your visual memory. Draw everything you have drawn from the model from memory as well.
Self-education only produces expressions of self.
There are pictures that manifest education and there are pictures that manifest love.
Let every student enter the school with this advice. No matter how good the school is his education is in his own hands. All education must be self education.
Do not expect pictures to say the expected; some of the best will have surprises for you which will at first shock you.
To have ideas one must have imagination. To express ideas one must have science.
The artist should be intoxicated with the idea of the thing he wants to express.
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.
Things should all be moving toward the expression of a great idea.
A picture should be the expression of the will of the painter.
Personal experimentation is revealing and once you get into it immensely engaging.
All outward success when it has value is but the inevitable result of an inward success of full living full play and enjoyment of one's faculties.
Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work else the observer will not enjoy it.
The good thing about painting from memory is that so much is forgotten.
The great painter has something to say. He does not paint men landscapes or furniture; but an idea.
There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.
If you work from memory you are most likely to put in your real feeling.
Renoir had not only a great interest in human character in human feeling but had also a great love for the people he painted.
It's a wrong idea that a master is a finished person. Masters are very faulty; they haven't learned everything and they know it.
Art is an outsider a gypsy over the face of the earth.
Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you.
Genius is not a possession of the limited few but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth a full and free play of faculties genius will manifest itself.
A GREAT PAINTER will know a great deal about how he did it but still he will say "How did I do it?
There are moments in our lives there are moments in a day when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.
In a tree there is a spirit of life a spirit of growth and a spirit of holding its head up.
The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it not passing negligently the things he loves but stopping to know them and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.
The fun of living is that we have to make ourselves after all.
The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.
Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.
The pictures which do not represent an intense interest cannot expect to create an intense interest.
Do whatever you do intensely.
The object isn't to make art it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.
I am interested in the size of your intention. It is better to overstate the important than to understate it.
Reality is obtained not by imitation but by producing the sense of nature.
When we respect the nude we will no longer have any shame about it.
The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.
There is weakness in pretending to know more than you know or in stating less than you know.
All education must be self-education.
Don't stop to paint the material but push on to give the spirit.
I paint for the sole purpose of magnifying the privilege of being alive.
An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.
Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.
The artist should have a powerful will. He should be powerfully possessed by one idea
You pass people on the street some are for you some are not.
I have heard it very often said that an artist does not need intelligence that his is the province of the soul
Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.
Your style is the way you talk in paint.
All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.
The more simply you see the more simply you will render. People see too much scatteringly.
The true artist regards his work as a means of talking with men [and women] of saying his say to himself and to others. It is not a question of pay...
Fight with yourself when you paint not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.
An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.
Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing.
Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give love to give discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong.