Guard your own naïveté.
It has to be within you,
as desire for drink is in the drunkard
or love is in the lover.
To see without distortion takes some courage.
An artist has to look at life as when he was a child,
to see things for the first time, every time.
Forget all roses that were ever painted.
Reality begins when you no longer understand
a single thing you do or know
and there remains in you an energy,
compressed, condensed.
And opposition makes it stronger.
An artist can’t be prisoner of himself,
a prisoner of manner, of success,
of reputation.
Be happy with a good day’s work,
enlightening the fog that’s all around us.
Seek the strongest color.
Content is not important.
A certain blue enters your soul.
A certain red affects your blood.
A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.
Don’t wait for inspiration.
It comes while you are working.
Impressionism
is the newspaper of the soul.
From the words of Henri Matisse
Linda Frye Burnham 2011
“Leaves after Matisse,” woodland banner by Steven Durland
Henri Matisse, “Violet Leaf on Orange Background” (1947)