Monday Motivator: Add to the Spirit of the Landscape

Art motivational quote“Nature excites the imagination to representation. But one must add to this spirit of the landscape in order to help its pictorial quality. Your composition should indicate the more or less entire character of these trees, even though the exact number you have chosen would not accurately express the landscape.”
— Henri Matisse

Quoted in Sarah Stein’s Notes, 1908, in Matisse on Art by Jack D. Flam, page 45

Attempt to convey what interests you in that particular landscape, leave out what you haven’t paid attention to and emphasise what you respond to in it. Share the scene as seen through your eyes, your experience of it, not merely what it looks like. The latter has technical skill and information; the former has technical skill and poetry.

2 Replies to “Monday Motivator: Add to the Spirit of the Landscape”

  1. Grand Council for the time to paint a landscape. I will have it very much in mind. Thanks for sharing it. Respectfully Mercedes

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