Henri Matisse - Emotion Quotes

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Matisse: I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.
Interviewer: But if one hasn't always emotion. What then?
Matisse: Do not paint. When I came in here to work this morning I had no emotion, so I took a horseback ride. When I returned I felt like painting, and had all the emotion I wanted.

Henri Matisse

When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion.

Henri Matisse

You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.

Henri Matisse

I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it.

Henri Matisse