At each stage I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find that there is a weakness in the whole, I make my way back into the picture by means of the weakness — I re-enter through the breach — and I reconceive the whole. Thus everything becomes fluid again.

Statement to Tériade, quoted by Tériade in "Constance de Fauvisme," Minotaure (15 October 1936), translated by Jack Flam in Matisse on Art (1995) - 1920 -1940