Robert Henri
Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.Collection: Power
Do whatever you do intensely.Collection: Motivational
Good composition is like a suspension bridge - each line adds strength and takes none away.Collection: Strength
I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.
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.
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.
It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.
A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.
There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.
Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.Collection: Life
Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read, study and think a great deal of life.Collection: Art
The picture that looks as if it were done without an effort may have been a perfect battlefield in its making.Collection: Perfect
There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual- become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.Collection: Reality
The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.Collection: Inspiring
Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life's experience.Collection: Inspiring
Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.Collection: Passion
Art after all is but an extension of language to the expression of sensations too subtle for words.Collection: Art
When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.Collection: Life
To be free, to be happy and to be fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.Collection: Sacrifice
Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit.Collection: Giving
Personal experimentation is revealing, and once you get into it, immensely engaging.Collection: Revealing
Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men.Collection: Art
Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing.Collection: Song
No work of Art is really ever finished. They only stop at good places.Collection: Art
When the motives of artists are profound, when they are at their work as a result of deep consideration, when they believe in the importance of what they are doing, their work creates a stir in the world.Collection: Believe
Everything depends on the attitude of the artist toward his subject. It is essential.Collection: Art
Your painting is the marking of your progression into nature, a sensation of something you see way beyond the two pretty colors over there. Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit.Collection: Color
We are not here to do what has already been done.Collection: Inspirational
Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.Collection: Inspiring
Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.Collection: Goes On
An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it.Collection: Artist
Color is only beautiful when it means something.Collection: Beautiful
I can think of no greater happiness than to be clear-sighted and know the miracle when it happens. And I can think of no more real life than the adventurous one of living and liking and exclaiming the things of one's own time.Collection: Real
Colors are beautiful when they are significant.Collection: Beautiful
The good thing about painting from memory is that so much is forgotten.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Art
Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong.Collection: Art
Many receive a criticism and think it is fine; think they got their money's worth; think well of the teacher for it, and then go on with their work just the same as before. That is the reason much of the wisdom of Plato is still locked up in the pages of Plato.Collection: Teacher
Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy: It is a very personal affair and is necessary to each individual.Collection: Appreciation
The world will see many fashions of art and most of the world will follow the fashions and make none. These cults - these 'movements' - are absolutely necessary, or at any rate their causes are, for somewhere in their centres are the ones who bear the Idea, the ones who have questioned, 'But what do I think?' and 'How shall I say it best?Collection: Fashion
All outward success, when it has value, is but the inevitable result of an inward success of full living, full play and enjoyment of one's faculties.Collection: Play
The pictures which do not represent an intense interest cannot expect to create an intense interest.Collection: Intense
After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Running
Students work in schools making life studies for years, win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy.Collection: Education
Reality is obtained not by imitation, but by producing the sense of nature.Collection: Reality
Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.Collection: Struggle
Concentrate on a single feature - as, build all toward one eye - make all lines lead toward that eye.Collection: Eye
Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture.Collection: Dancing
The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.Collection: Real