Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint.
To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.
She that paints her Face, thinks of her Tail.
Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting.
Painting is a faith and that it brings with it the duty to pay no heed to public opinion – and that in it one conquers by perseverance and not by giving in.[Schilderen een geloof is en dat het den pligt meebrengt van zich niet te storen aan de publieke opinie – en dat men er in overwint door volharding maar niet door toegeven.]
Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.[La pintura es un oficio de ciegos. El pintor no pinta lo que ve, sino lo que siente, lo que comenta consigo mismo acerca de lo que ha visto.]
Only when painting isn’t painting can there be an affront to modesty.
One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite – that particular peach is but a detail.
No blue without yellow and without orange, and if you do blue, then do yellow and orange as well, surely.[Pas de bleu sans jaune et sans orangé; et si vous faites le bleu, faites donc le jaune et l’orangé aussi, n’est – ce pas!]
It isn’t the language of painters one ought to listen to but the language of nature. Feeling things themselves, reality, is more important than feeling paintings.[Het is niet de taal van de schilders zoozeer als de taal van de natuur waar men naar luisteren moet. Het voelen van de dingen zelf, van de werkelijkheid, is van meer belang dan het voelen van schilderijen.]
In the end, there is only love. However it may be. And they ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.
In painting as in life, you must act directly.
