No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

My life has been nothing but a failure.

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.

Among the seascapes, I am doing the regattas of Le Havre with many figures on the beach and the outer harbor covered with small sails.

Etretat is becoming more and more amazing. Now is the real moment: the beach with all its fine boats; it is superb, and I am enraged not to be more skillful in rendering all this. I would need two hands and hundreds of canvases.

Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.

Finally here is a beautiful day, a superb sun like at Giverny. So I worked without stopping, for the tide at this moment is just as I need it for several motifs. This has bucked me up a bit.

For a long time, I have hoped for better days, but alas, today it is necessary for me to lose all hope. My poor wife suffers more and more. I do not think it is possible to be any weaker.

I am installed in a fairylike place. I do not know where to poke my head; everything is superb, and I would like to do everything, so I use up and squander lots of color, for there are trials to be made.

I am working, but when one has ceased to do seascape, it is the devil afterward - very difficult; it changes at every instant, and here the weather varies several times in the same day.

I do have a dream, a painting, the baths of La Grenouillere for which I've done a few bad rough sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.

I have always worked better alone and from my own impressions.

I have never had a studio, and I do not understand shutting oneself up in a room. To draw, yes; to paint, no.

I pass my time in the open air on the beach when it is really heavy weather or when the boats go out fishing.

I was definitely born under an evil star. I have just been thrown out of the inn where I was staying, naked as a worm.

I wear myself out and struggle with the sun. And what a sun here! It would be necessary to paint here with gold and gemstones. It is wonderful.

I will do water - beautiful, blue water.

It is extraordinary to see the sea; what a spectacle! She is so unfettered that one wonders whether it is possible that she again become calm.

My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.

There, the grand lines of mountain and sea are admirable, and apart from the exotic vegetation that is here, Monte Carlo is certainly the most beautiful spot of the entire coast: the motifs there are more complete, more picturelike, and consequently easier to execute.

Try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, 'Here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow,' and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you your own impression of the scene before you.

I must have flowers, always, and always.

I had so much fire in me and so many plans.

Ones better off alone and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on ones own. In fact its a terrible business and the task is a hard one.

Color is my day long obsession joy and torment.

It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

It is on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

I'm inspired by nature. Other artist's work is important for developing my perception.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.

You have to find what makes you stable in the storm. Then, no matter what's happening round you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade.

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

The most colorful section of a bookstore is the display of SF books, with art by people like Wayne Barlow, who is a terrific artist.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.