An Artist Must Not Feel Under Any

If People Knew What Matisse, Supposedly The Painter Of Happiness, Had Gone Through, The Anguish And Tragedy He Had To Overcome To Manage To Capture That Light Which Has Never Left Him, If People Knew All That, They Would Also Realize That This Happiness, This Light, This Dispassionate Wisdom Which Seems To Be Mine, Are Sometimes Well-deserved, Given The Severity Of My Trials.

Art Should Be Something Like A Good Armchair In Which To Rest From Physical Fatigue.

When I Started To Paint I Felt Transported Into A Kind Of Paradise... In Everyday Life I Was Usually Bored And Vexed... Starting To Paint I Felt Gloriously Free.

Slowly I Discovered The Secret Of My Art. It Consists Of A Meditation On Nature, On The Expression Of A Dream Which Is Always Inspired By Reality. With More Involvement And Regularity, I Learned To Push Each Study In A Certain Direction. Little By Little The Notion That Painting Is A Means Of Expression Asserted Itself, And That One Can Express The Same Thing In Several Ways. Exactitude Is Not Truth, Delacroix Liked To Say.

You Must Forget All Your Theories, All Your Ideas Before The Subject. What Part Of These Is Really Your Own Will Be Expressed In Your Expression Of The Emotion Awakened In You By The Subject.