Robert Henri

“Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.”

“The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”

“Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.”

“Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway.”

“An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.”

“A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.”

“There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.”

“Art when really understood is the province of every human being.”

“Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.”

“The artist who is useful is the artist who studies his own life and records his own reactions.”

“What we need is more sense of the wonder of life and less of this business of making a picture.”

“The sketch hunter is a man of curiosity.”

“A tree is a tree, and a rock is a rock, and a man is a man. Ideas are not in things, ideas are in us.”

“Don't paint the thing, paint the effect.”

“Every student is a different kind of plant and needs a different kind of cultivation.”

“It is not the medium or the material that makes the art, but the vision and the feeling of the artist.”

“The subject can be as it may, beautiful or ugly. It is the artist's feeling that makes the picture.”

“You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is the skill to formulate your desires.”