PIERRE BONNARD

The important thing is to remember what most impressed you and to put it on canvas as fast as possible.

One always talks of surrendering to nature. There is also such a thing as surrendering to the picture.

You reason color more than you reason drawing... Color has a logic as severe as form.

I'm trying to do what I have never done - give the impression one has on entering a room: one sees everything and at the same time nothing.

Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it.

Work on the accent, it will enliven the whole.

Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.

The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

It is still color, it is not yet light.

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

When you forget everything, there only remains yourself - and that is not enough.

I should like to present myself to the young painters of the year 2000 with the wings of a butterfly.

Art will never be able to exist without nature.

It's not a matter of painting life, it's a matter of giving life to painting.

Drawing is feeling. Color is an act of reason.

The artist who paints the emotions creates an enclosed world... the picture... which, like a book, has the same interest no matter where it happens to be. Such an artist, we may imagine, spends a great deal of time doing nothing but looking, both around him and inside him.

Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory.

And after drawing comes composition. A well-composed painting is half done

I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art.

The expression on my face - who on earth would be interested in that? All that I have to say is to be found in my works. (On being photographed)

One does not always sing out of happiness.

It seemed to me that it was possible to translate light, forms, and character using nothing but color, without recourse to values.

Speaking, when you have something to say, is like looking. But who looks? If people could see properly, and see whole, they would all be painters. And it's because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand.

The painter's only solid ground is the palette and colors, but as soon as the colors achieve an illusion, they are no longer judged.