The Art Spirit

Don’t belong to any school. Don’t tie up to any technique.

Do some great work, Son! Don’t try to paint good landscapes. Try to paint canvases that will show how interesting landscape looks to you—your pleasure in the thing. Wit.

I am sure there are many people—and there are artists—who have never seen a whole head. They look from feature to feature. You can’t draw a head until you see it whole. It’s not easy. Try it.

The value of a school should be in the meeting of students. The art school should be the life-centre of a city. Ideas should radiate from it.

good picture is a fruit of all your great living.

There is the heart and the mind, the Puritan idea is that the mind must be master. I think the heart should be master and the mind should be the tool and servant of the heart. As it is, we give too much attention to laws and not enough to principles. The man who wants to produce art must have the emotional side first, and this must be reinforced by

love the tools made for mechanics. I stop at the windows of hardware stores. If I could only find an excuse to buy many more of them than I have already bought on the mere pretense that I might have use for them! They are so beautiful, so simple and plain and straight to their meaning. There is no “Art” about them, they have not been made beautiful

Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art. Art is a result. It is the trace of those who have led their lives.

Look for the spirit line that runs through everything.

With a great will to say a thing comes clairvoyance. The more positively you have the need of a certain expression the more power you will have to select out of chaos the term of that expression.