Paul Gauguin Quotes
The cyclone ends. The sun returns; the lofty coconut trees lift up their plumes again; man does likewise. The great anguish is over; joy has returned; the sea smiles like a child.
I have come to an unalterable decision - to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots.
Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.
Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland - those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.
Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!
Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.
My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.
Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.
I sit at my door, smoking a cigarette and sipping my absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world
What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art?
Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature.
The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.
Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.
Do not finish your work too much. An impression is not sufficiently durable for its first freshness to survive a belated search for infinite detail; in this way you let the lava grow cool.
And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.
The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.
Whatever may happen the sun will rise tomorrow as it rose to-day, beneficent and serene.
It is useless to advise solitude for everyone; one must be strong enough to endure it and to work alone.
In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.
Go on working, freely and furiously, you will make progress and sooner or later your worth will be recognised, if you have any.
One's state of mind is three-quarters of what counts, so it has to be carefully nurtured if you want to do something great and lasting.
The great artist is a formulation of the greatest intelligence: he is the recipient of sensations which are the most delicate and consequently the most invisible expressions of the brain.
Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will.
It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.
There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.
Out in the sun, some painters are lined up. The first is copying nature, the second is copying the first, the third is copying the second... You see the sequence.
Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.
Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.
I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements.