Henri Matisse Quotes

Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.

Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.

Ever since there have been men, man has given himself over to too little joy.

That alone, my brothers, is our original sin. I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance.

Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.

I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.

Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.

Nothing can be accomplished without love.

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.

A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has an effect on your blood-pressure.

I never retouch a sketch: I take a canvas the same size, as I may change the composition somewhat. But I always strive to give the same feeling, while carrying it on further.

Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist.

His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

Art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.

A certain blue enters your soul

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete.

It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.

Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances.

Another word for creativity is courage.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.

The artist has to look at life as he did when he was a child.

If he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way.

An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.

There is no interruption between my older paintings and my cutouts.

Just that with an increasing sense of the absolute, and more abstraction, I have achieved a form that is simplified to its essence.

Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions, I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format.

Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements which the painter uses to express his sentiments. In a picture every separate part will be visible and... everything which has no utility in the picture is for that reason harmful.

I don't know whether I believe in God or not.

I think, really, I'm some sort of Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.

The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive.

The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part.

From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.

Above all, an artist must never be too easily satisfied with what he has done.

A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.

It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.

A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.

When I eat a tomato I look at it the way anyone else would.

But when I paint a tomato, then I see it differently.

When you're out of will power you call on stubbornness, that's the trick.

A distinction is made between artists who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Neither if these methods should be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Often both are used in turn by the same man.

The energy within you is stronger than ever for being held back, compressed, and said No to.

Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain.

I cannot copy nature in a servile way;

I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.

Truth and reality in art do not arise until you no longer understand what you are doing and are capable of but nevertheless sense a power that grows in proportion to your resistance.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.

Seek the strongest color effect possible... the content is of no importance.

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.

The chief function of color should be to serve expression as well as possible.

You want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.