Henri Matisse

Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.
Henri Matisse

Color was not given to us in order that we should imitate Nature. It was given to us so that we can express our emotions.
Henri Matisse

Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.
Henri Matisse

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
Henri Matisse

Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.
Henri Matisse

Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.
Henri Matisse

The artists must see all things as if he were seeing them for the first time. All his life he must see as he did when he was a child.
Henri Matisse

Nothing can be accomplished without love.
Henri Matisse

If I close my eyes, I see things better than with my eyes open.
Henri Matisse

The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.
Henri Matisse

Drawing is putting a line around an idea.
Henri Matisse

The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage.
Henri Matisse

"Artist to Artist : Inspiration and Advice from Visual Artists Past & Present". Book by Clint Brown (p. 62_, 1998.

There are flowers everywhere, for those who bother to look.
Henri Matisse

Ever since there have been men, man has given himself over to too little joy. That alone, my brothers, is our original sin. I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance.
Henri Matisse

It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony.
Henri Matisse
Beautiful, Art, Color
Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.216, Univ of California Press

Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances.
Henri Matisse

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.
Henri Matisse

Art is an escape from reality.
Henri Matisse

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.
Henri Matisse

It is my dream to create an art which is filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting or too attention-seeking. In my paintings, I wish to create a spiritual remedy, similar to a comfortable armchair which provides rest from physical expectation for the spiritually working, the businessman as well as the artist.
Henri Matisse

Creation begins with vision.
Henri Matisse
Vision, Creation
Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.217, Univ of California Press

My pictures are made up of four or five colors that collide with one another.
Henri Matisse

...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.
Henri Matisse
Feelings, Want, Opinion
Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.43, Univ of California Press

We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.
Henri Matisse

In love, the one who runs away is the winner.
Henri Matisse

When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.
Henri Matisse