Great Throughts Treasury

"Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life."

"Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit."

"Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do."

"Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing."

"Each man must seek for himself the people who hold the essential beauty, and each man must eventually say to himself as I do, 'these are my people and all that I have I owe to them."

"Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure."

"Each sensation is precious, protect it, cherish it, keep it. Never give it away. You must develop that balance which allows all of the world to come in to you, and only that which you have expressed in your art to move back out again into the world."

"Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order."

"Five minutes? consideration of the model is more important than hours of haphazard work."

"Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself."

"Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out."

"Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away.... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer ? that is composition."

"Has your drawing the meaning you saw in the model at first?"

"Houses, housetops, like human beings have wonderful character. The lives of housetops. The wear of the seasons. The country is beautiful, young, growing things. The majesty of trees. The backs of"

"I am always sorry for the Puritan, for he guided his life against desire and against nature. He found what he thought was comfort, for he believed the spirit's safety was in negation, but he has never given the world one minute's joy or produced one symbol of the beautiful order of nature. He sought peace in bondage and his spirit became a prisoner."

"I am interested in the size of your intention. It is better to overstate the important than to understate it."

"I have heard it very often said that an artist does not need intelligence, that his is the province of the soul"

"I have no sympathy with the belief that art is the restricted province of those who paint, sculpt, make music and verse. I hope we will come to an understanding that the material used is only incidental, that there is artist in every man; and that to him the possibility of development and of expression and the happiness of creation is as much a right and as much a duty to himself, as to any of those who work in the especially ticketed ways."

"I paint for the sole purpose of magnifying the privilege of being alive."

"If a certain activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression, it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state."

"If a new movement in art comes along be awake to it, study it, but don?t belong to it. Have a personal humor about things. You will never know your calibre until you have tried yourself. Avoid idle industry. Always leave out the padding. Be venturesome. Try new things that appeal to you. Examine others. Have a pioneer spirit. Prevent your drawing from being common. Put life into it. The way to do this is to see the model, see that the model is great, wonderful?a human creature there before you in the tragedy and comedy of life?then draw."

"If the artist's will is not strong he will see all kinds of unessential things."

"If we are cultivating fruit in an orchard, we wish that particular fruit to grow in its own way; we give it the soil it needs, the amount of moisture, the amount of care, but we do not treat the apple tree as we would the pear tree or the peach tree as we would the vineyard on the hillside. Each is allowed the freedom of its own kind and the result is the perfection of growth which can be accomplished in no other way. The time must come when the same freedom is allowed the individual; each in his own way must develop according to nature's purpose, the body must be but the channel for the expression of purpose, interest, emotion, labor. Everywhere freedom must be the sign of reason."

"If you do not act on a suggestion at first, you grow dull to its message."

"If you think of a school drawing while you work, your drawing will look like one."

"If you work from memory, you are most likely to put in your real feeling."

"In a tree there is a spirit of life, a spirit of growth and a spirit of holding its head up."

"In certain books?some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother."

"In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?"

"In great art there is no beginning and end in point of time. All time is comprehended."

"In my understanding of color, there is absolutely no such thing as color for color's sake. Colors are beautiful when they are significant. Lines are beautiful when they are significant. It is what they signify that is beautiful to us, really. The color is the means of expression."

"In search for the perfect beginning."

"In these times there is a powerful demarcation between the surface and the deep currents of human development. Events and upheavals, which seem more profound than they really are, are happening on the surface. But there is another and deeper change in progress. It is of long, steady persistent growth, very little affected and not at all disturbed by surface conditions. The artist of today should be alive to this deeper evolution on which all growth depends, has depended and will depend. On the surface there is the battle of institutions, the illustration of events, the strife between peoples. On the surface there is propaganda and there is the effort to force opinions. The deeper current carries no propaganda. The shock of the surface upheaval does not deflect it from its course. It is in search of fundamental principle; that basic principle of all, which in degree as it is apprehended points the way to beauty and order, and to the law of nature."

"Insist then, on the beauty of form and color to be obtained from the composition of the largest masses, the four or five large masses which cover your canvas. Let these above all things have fine shapes, have fine colors. Let them be as meaningful of your subject as they possibly can be. It is wonderful how much real finish can be obtained through them, how much of gesture and modeling can be obtained through their contours, what satisfactions can be obtained from their fine measures in area, color and value. Most students and most painters in fact rush over this; they are in a hurry to get on to other matters, minor matters." ? "Determine to get in these larger masses all that is possible of completion, all the drawing, color, design, character, construction, effect. Remember that the greatest beauty can be expressed through these masses, that the distinction of the whole canvas depends on them."

"It beats all the things that wealth can give and everything else in the world to say the things one believes, to put them into form, to pass them on to anyone who may care to take them up."

"It is a creation of your own mind, not the model. The model is dependent on your idea of her. Your canvas should be a thing created under the influence of her."

"It is an effort to stop evolution, to hold things back to the plane of your judgment. It is a check on a great adventure of human life. It is negative to the idea that youth should go forward. It is for the coming generation to judge you, not for you to judge it. So it must happen, whether you will it or not."

"It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him."

"It takes great wit and interest and energy to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish."

"It takes wit, interest and energy to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish, and spirits must flow."

"It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do."

"It's a wrong idea that a master is a finished person. Masters are very faulty; they haven't learned everything and they know it."

"Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad."

"Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. All the past can help you."

"Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes."

"Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development."

"Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves."

"Look for echoes. Sometimes the same shape or direction will echo through the picture."

"Manet did not do the expected. He was a pioneer. He followed his individual whim. Told the public what he wanted it to know, not the time worn things the public already knew and thought it wanted to hear again. The public was very much offended."

"Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds."