Vincent Van Gogh Quotes
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I see more and more that my work goes infinitely better when I am properly fed, and the paints are there, and the studio and all that... I wish I could manage to make you really understand that when you give money to artists, you are yourself doing an artist's work, and that I only want my pictures to be of such a quality that you will not be too dissatisfied with your work.
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Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don't know anything.
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Gauguin says that when sailors have to move a heavy load or raise an anchor, they all sing together to keep them up and give them vim. That's just what artists lack!
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I feel the need of relations and friendship, of affection, of friendly intercourse.... I cannot miss these things without feeling, as does any other intelligent man, a void and a deep need.
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When using colors to recreate a general harmony of tones in nature, one loses it by painfully exact imitation. One keeps it by recreating in an equivalent color range, and that may not be exactly, or far from exactly, like the model.
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Even this artistic life, which we know is not real life, appears to me to be so alive and so vital that it would be a form ingratitude not to be content with it.
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The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right.
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To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
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I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
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But you must love with a sublime , genuine , profound sympathy , with devotion, with intelligence , and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God , that will lead to an unshakeable faith .
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Well, do you know what I hope for, once I allow myself to begin to hope? [...] That you find in your love for people something not only to work for, but to comfort and restore you when there is a need.
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There is no blue without yellow and without orange.
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Let me stop there, but my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.
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Surely the true path is to dive deep into nature.
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To know life, one must love many things.
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Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.
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What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.
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Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too; at all events, I think it such a great blessing when a man has found his work that I cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean, I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn't like to be counted among the unfortunate, nor would it be correct if I were.
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Still, there is a calm, pure harmony, and music inside of me.
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It must be a good thing to die conscious of having performed some real good, and to know that by this work one will live, at least in the memory of some, and will have left a good example to those that come after. A work that is good-it may not be eternal, but the thought expressed in it is, and the work itself will certainly remain in existence for a long, long time; and if afterwards others arise, they can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and do their work in the same way.
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The thing has already taken form in my mind before I start it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worthwhile in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real direction and purpose.
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It is true that every day has its own evil, and its good too. But how difficult must life be, especially farther on when the evil of each day increases as far as worldly things go, if it is not strengthened and comforted by faith. And in Christ all worldly things may become better, and, as it were, sanctified. Theo, woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel; if I did not aim at that and possess faith and hope in Christ, it would be bad for me indeed, but no I have some courage.
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l can do very well without God both in my life and in my painting, but l cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than l, which is my life — the power to create.
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The laws of the colors are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.