If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.
Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.
No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.
The only real influence I've ever had was myself.
My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.
Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.
Well, I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics.
What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.
I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions.
In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.
After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.
More of me comes out when I improvise.
In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.
Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.
There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house.
I trust Winsor and Newton and I paint directly upon it.
There will be, I think, an attempt to grasp again the surprise and accidents of nature and a more intimate and sympathetic study of its moods, together with a renewed wonder and humility on the part of such as are still capable of these basic reactions.
I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds.
I find linseed oil and white lead the most satisfactory mediums.
I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me.
