Henri Matisse: His Words

A picture must possess a real power to generate light, and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light, or rather in light.

A new painting is a unique event, a birth, which enriches the universe as it is grasped by the human mind, by bringing a new form into it

A musician once said: In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed. It is therefore necessary to present oneself with the greatest humility: white, pure and candid with a mind as if empty, in a spiritual state analogous to that of a communicant approaching the Lord's Table. Obviously it is necessary to have all of one's experience behind one, but to preserve the freshness of one's instincts

A large part of the beauty of a picture arises from the struggle which an artist wages with his limited medium

A distinction is made between artists who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Neither if these methods should be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Often both are used in turn by the same man...

A colourist makes his presence known even in a simple charcoal drawing

A certain color tones you up. It's the concentration of timbres

Never ruin a good painting with the truth.

A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has an effect on your blood-pressure.

I simply put down colours which render my sensation