We don't have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds.
My only ambition was to create an honest picture that would interpret nature as she really is, as she ought to be seen.
I could not paint at all if I had to paint slowly. Every effect is so transient, it must be rapidly painted.
Nature, the sun itself, produces color effects. . . instantaneously. The impression of these evanescent visions is what we make desperate attempts to catch and fix by any means at hand. At such moments I am unconscious of materials, of style, of rules, of everything that intervenes between my perception and the object or idea perceived.
All the mistakes committed by artists are due to their having separated themselves from truth, believing that their imagination is stronger. There is nothing stronger than nature. With nature in front of us we can do everything well.
Go to nature with no parti pris. You should not know what your picture is to look like until it is done. Just see the picture that is coming.
If ever a painter wrought a miracle of illusion with brush and pigment that painter was Velazquez in his Las Meninas, at the Prado in Madrid.
[T]here is an inverse correlation between the cleanliness of a bathroom and my 3-year-old daughter's need to move her bowels.
As liberty and intelligence have increased the people have more and more revolted against the theological dogmas that contradict common sense and wound the tenderest sensibilities of the soul.
Here's to five miserable months on the wagon and the irreparable harm that it's caused me.
I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself.