Henri Matisse Drawing Quotations

The paper cutouts allow me to draw with color. For me, it is a simplification. Instead of drawing an outline and then filling in with color-with one modifying the other-I draw directly in color...It is not a starting point, it is a completion.

A colourist makes his presence known even in a simple charcoal drawing.

I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it.

Drawing is of the spirit; color is of the senses.

Drawing is . . . not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods.

Color, even more than drawing, is a means of liberation.

If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit.

Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions, I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format.

To draw is to make an idea precise. Drawing is the precision of thought.

Drawing is putting a line around an idea.

When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion.