Quotes About Expression

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul.

There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.

When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion, then I go out and paint the stars.

I think that I still have it in my heart someday to paint a bookshop with the front yellow and pink in the evening...like a light in the midst of the darkness.

I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.

We are surrounded by poetry on all sides...

What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life.

We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words

So what do you want? Does what happens inside show on the outside? There is such a great fire in one's soul, and yet nobody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way.

How rich art is, if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never empty of thoughts or truly lonely, never alone.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

To understand blue you must first understand yellow and orange

An artist needn't be a clergyman or a church warden, but he must have a warm heart for his fellow men

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

The more ugly, old, nasty, ill, and poor I become the more I want to get my own back by producing vibrant, well-arranged, radiant colour.

The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.

Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the painter who dares and who has broken the spell of 'you can't' once and for all.

I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.

Drawing is the root of everything!

I thought I would be understood without words

My great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes of reality, so that they may become, yes, untruth if you like - but more true than the literal truth.