Henri Matisse Paint Quotations

Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.

Never ruin a good painting with the truth.

What's so astonishing about not understanding? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand. A painter doesn't see everything that he has put in his painting.

I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn't one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.

Starting to paint, I felt gloriously free, quiet, and alone.

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

It has always bothered me that I don't paint like everyone else

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

There is no interruption between my older paintings and my cutouts. Just that with an increasing sense of the absolute, and more abstraction, I have achieved a form that is simplified to its essence.

A distinction is made between painters who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Personally, I think neither of these methods must be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Both may be used in turn by the same indivi

All that I really have to recount are observations and notes made during the course of my life as a painter. I ask those who will have the patience to read these notes the indulgence usually granted to the writings of painters

The only valid thing in art is the one thing that cannot be explained, to explain away the mystery of a great painting would do irreplaceable harm, for whenever you explain or define something you substitute the explanation or the definition for the