Quotes About Creativity

I hope when you go back to Holland you will take along some study of mine to decorate your room.

An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwanderer, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

My dear sister, it is my belief that it is actually one's duty to paint the rich and magnificent aspects of nature. We need gaiety and happiness, hope and love. The more ugly, old, mean, ill, poor I get, the more I want to take my revenge by producing a brilliant colour, well arranged, resplendent.

The day will come, however, when people will see they are worth more than the price of the paint and my living expenses, very meagre on the whole, which we put into them"_ Page.419

Art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from man's soul"_Page.268

The more I am spent, ill, a broken pitcher, so much more am I an artist.

If I can manage to paint the coloring of my own head, which is not to be done without some difficulty, I shall likewise be able to paint the heads of other good souls

You see I am not stronger than other people in that if I neglected myself too much, it would be the same with me as with so many painters (so very many if one thinks it over), I should drop dead, or worse still - become insane or an idiot.

But what would Monsieur Tersteeg say about this picture when he said before a Sisley - Sisley, the most discreet and gentle of the impressionists - "I can't help thinking that the artist who painted that was a little tipsy." If he saw my picture, he would say that it was delirium tremens in full swing.

To tell you the truth, I couldn't spare either the old- or the new-fashioned manner. Too many beautiful things have been done too unusually well for me to prefer one to the other systematically. And the changes which the moderns have made in art are not always for the better; not everything means progress - neither in the works nor in the artists themselves - and often it seems to me that many lose sight of the origin and the goal, or in other words, they do not stick to the point.

Ludilo je spasonosno, jer ?ovek možda postaje manje isklju?iv.

You are thrifty yourself, you understand what is absolutely needed. And I ask you, can one do what is absolutely necessary with what remains for one's own use after paying for painting materials, models, and rent? If I had some friends, if I were a little known, yes, then it would be easier; but I have no friends, and my job is to try and make them.

You are kind to painters, and I tell you, the more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. You will say that then it would be a good thing to do without art and artists.

How much sadness there is in life! Nevertheless one must not become melancholy. One must seek distraction in other things, and the right thing is to work.

A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke

Normality is a paved road: It's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

Art is to console those who are broken by life.

It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.

The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.

That I was not suited to commerce or academic study in no way proves that I should also be unfit to be a painter.

I dream my painting and I paint my dream.

and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?

If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.