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

Whatever you feel or think your exact state at the exact moment of your brush touching the canvas is in some way registered in that stroke.

Don't worry about the rejections. Everybody that's good has gone through it. Don't let it matter if your works are not "accepted" at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance.

Colors are beautiful when they are significant.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.

A weak background is a deadly thing.

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