Camille Pissarro Quotes

My thing is about following the accidental, more than trying to paint an accurate bowl of apples. I enjoy most following the paint. It leads me somewhere else. I think I enjoy just letting the magic unfold and letting the spirit of the paint tell me where we're going.

My instinct about painting says, 'if you don't think about it, it's right.' As soon as you have to decide and choose, it's wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

I don't like to over-intellectualize scenes that are working. I tend to think when you do that you may lose it.

I don't make judgments about my own work, and I don't analyze it; I just let it happen. That applies to everything I've done.

I base everything on my instinctual approach. There's something very satisfying in that creativity, and it's a bit like an infant drawing.

That's the best kind of music: the stuff that happens based off intuition.

For me, the sketchbooks are more like a secret and wholly spontaneous jeu d'esprit and some of them I like as much as anything I have ever done. They are invariably without premeditation. I mean not only that I have no plan when I make them, I also have no plan to make them.

I have a vision for everything that I make, but... I'm not that considerate about what I do. I do whatever is in my head and how it ends up tends to be the thing that it's supposed to be. It was never a premeditated decision.

In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.

The trouble with a lot of people who try to write is they intellectualize about it. That comes after. The intellect is given to us by God to test things once they’re done, not to worry about things ahead of time.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

I don't try to go to the studio and make a single. I just do whatever I feel.

I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.

Any song I have to work on longer than a day, I just leave it. It's not gonna work. Everything that's good is really instant.

I just throw it out and see what happens. If it sounds and feels right, then I continue.

I want to try and be instinctive as a writer and director.

I am like a folk painter. Paint and move ahead.

Usually when a song comes to me, I don't ask a lot of questions; I hear something, and I just let it out in song. It's like making a salad. Everything I hear, and everything I am, I mix together in a different way in each song.

The songs come along at their own pace when they are ready.

I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment.

I've heard my work called 'bold' and 'graffiti-like,' but for me it is always instinctual. I start with a shape or a colour and go from there.

I write and draw from the gut. I often don't know what my stories are about until they're done.

The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas.

I paint according to the moment and the theme. I don't have any prejudice. Life concerns me.