Henri Matisse Quotes

The downside of videos is that it will put my vision in front of other people, so they might not get the chance to create their own.

You make something. You give up expressing and start inventing.

One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.

Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.

Sometimes I can see the whole painting from the outset in my mind's eye. But more often than not, that idea doesn't last the duration of the painting. Sometimes it comes out easy, just as I had envisaged. But that is reasonably rare.

Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite - getting something down.

No one was creating and I always wanted to be created on.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

As a creative person, you want to start with a blank canvas.

Creativity is always a leap of faith. You're faced with a blank page, blank easel, or an empty stage.

Being creative is my idea of heaven. I'm just incredibly fortunate that I can do it in artwork. Watercolor is what I started out with. What I love about watercolor is that a lot of happy accidents occur.

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.

Being essentially a creator, I never set out to shock, always thinking about creating my work and not about the benefits it could produce.

The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.

If it feels like we're re-creating something rather than creating something, we don't do it.

The secret sauce of the business that I can offer is my creativity, and in order to keep my creativity alive and fresh, I have to pretend that no one is watching the show, that there are no audiences, there are no ratings; I'm just telling a story.

You're not gonna write a hundred songs and have a hundred entirely different ideas. It's a matter of finding the ones that are the freshest and most unique.

If a man wants to be an artist, he must never look at pictures.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that writing is mysterious; you don't ever truly know where it is coming from, so don't edit yourself line by line. Don't get in your own way. Whatever is truly there at the core, that is your voice.

That's the thing about creating. When you create, you create your own thing, whatever that is. It's always going to seep through in whatever you do.

Creativity is not about making 30 songs in 30 days. It's never about demand and supply. No one can possibly do that.

You can't slot a time and a space and think 'ok now it's time to sit and compose.' It just doesn't work like that for me.

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me.