Quotes about Art

I'm getting on well here, I've got a lovely home & I'm finding it very pleasurable taking a look at London & the English way of life & the English people themselves, & then I've got nature & art & poetry, & if that isn't enough, what is?

oy where did my ear go?

I shall have to produce an enormous number of things against next year - when the World's Fair will be held - seeing that my friends will not fail to have many interesting things on hand by then. Not that I myself or any of the painters I hold regular or special intercourse with are going to exhibit along with the others, but it is to be expected that there will be a free exhibition besides the official one. Now, for

Now and then when I am writing, I automatically do a small drawing, such as I sent you lately. I did one this morning representing Elijah in the desert under an orange sky, with some hawthorns in the foreground. It is nothing special, but I see it all so clearly before me, and I think that at such moments I could speak about it enthusiastically - may it be given me to do so later on.

If you hear a voice within you say ,you cannot paint,' then by all means paint. And that voice will be silenced.

Fortunately for me, I do not hanker after victory any more, and all that I seek in painting is a way to make life bearable.

So now, when anyone says that such and such is done too quickly, you can reply that they have looked at it too quickly.

Did I tell you that I had sent the drawings to friend Russell? At the moment I am doing practically the same ones again for you, there will be twelve likewise. You will then see better what there is in the painted studies in the way of drawing. I have already told you that I always have to fight against the mistral, which makes it absolutely impossible to be master of your stroke. That accounts for the "haggard" look of the studies.

If I were living near you, I should try to make you understand that it might perhaps be more practical for you to paint with me than to write, and that you might be able to express your feelings more easily that way. In any case I can do something personally about your painting, but I am not in the writing profession.

Try to grasp the essence of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces, and you will again find God in them. One man has written or said it in a book, another in a painting. Just read the Bible and the Gospel, that will start you thinking, thinking about many things, thinking about everything, well then, think about many things, think about everything, that will lift your thoughts above the humdrum despite yourself. We know how to read, so let us read!

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life - the power to create. And if, defrauded of the power to create physically, a man tries to create thoughts in place of children, he is still very much part of humanity.

The day will come, however, when people will see they are worth more than the price of the paint and my living expenses, very meagre on the whole, which we put into them"_ Page.419