Willa Cather Quotes

All art does but consist in the removal of surplusage.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

You can create something strong in art with a few notes. It is like how Aboriginal drawings have a simplicity that is incredibly rich.

Concision in art is a necessity and an elegance. The verbose painter bores: who will get rid of all these trimmings?

The true work of art is always on the human scale. It is essentially the one that says, 'less.

The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.

The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes.

I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.

Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.

I am an Indian and a painter, that's all.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Art is the exclusion of the unnecessary.

Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole - so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.

Generally, I am opposed to painting which is concerned with conceptions of simplicity. Everything looks busy to me.

It fascinates me to create beautiful paintings with the simplest means.

Simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.

Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

The finest works of art are those in which there is the least matter. The closer expression comes to thought, the more the word clings to the idea and disappears, the more beautiful the work of art.

There was very little art in my childhood.

We talk too much. We should talk less and draw more.

The last thing is simplicity. After having gone through all the difficulties, having played an endless number of notes, it is simplicity that matters, with all its charm. It is the final seal on Art. Anyone who strives for this to begin with will be disappointed. You cannot begin at the end.

I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violent, and I am not violent.)

Most of my pictures are really small statements. There's a banality to them.

Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.

The artist who uses the least of what is called imagination will be the greatest.