Quotes about Creativity

When I see how several painters I know here are struggling with their watercolours and paintings so that they can't see a solution anymore, I sometimes think: Friend, the fault is in your drawing. I don't regret for a moment that I did not go in for watercolour and oil painting straight away. I am sure I will catch up if only I struggle on, so that my hand does not waver in drawing and perspective.

Do go on doing a lot of walking and keep up your love of nature, for that is the right way to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see. And there are painters who never do anything that is no good...

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? If you hear a voice within saying 'You are not a painter' then by all means paint — and that voice will be silenced.

I couldn't care less what the colours are in reality.

And then there are painters who never do anything that is no good, who cannot do anything bad, just as there are ordinary people who can do nothing but good.

You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter, 'You can't do a thing'.

In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.

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.

I must tell you that even while working I think continually about the plan of setting up a studio in which you and I will be permanent residents, but which both of us want to turn into a shelter and refuge for friends, against the times when they find that the struggle is getting too much for them.

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.

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.