Vincent Van Gogh Art Quotations

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Look here, I often feel the same in more than one respect--not just in financial things, but in art itself, and in life in general. But do you think it's anything exceptional? Don't you think every man with a little spirit and energy has those moment

How rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone.

I lost my job as an art salesman. It was the customer's fault. He wanted to buy the wrong paintings.

Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too; at all events, I think it such a great blessing when a man has found his work that I cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean, I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn't like to be counted among the unfortunate, nor would it be correct if I were.

Art, although produced by man's hands, is something not created by hands alone, but something which wells up from a deeper source out of our soul.....My sympathies in the literary as well as in the artistic field are drawn most strongly to those artists in whom I see most the working of the soul.

Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.

I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.

My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it of their own accord, instead of having to praise or to explain it.

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say "he feels deeply, he feels tenderly".

What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.

Ah! My dear friend painting is to us what the music of Berlioz and Wagner was before us - a consolatory art for sore hearts! And yet there are only a few like you and me who feel it!!!

Everyone who works with love and with intelligence finds in the very sincerity of his love for nature and art a kind of armor against the opinions of other people.

The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.

But I must work on in full calmness and serenity... The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it, because I have walked on the earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, not made to please a certain tendency in art, but to express a sincere human feeling. So this work is the aim-and through concentration upon that one idea, everything one does is simplified. Now the work goes slowly-a reason the more to lose no time.

Sometimes art seems to be something very sublime, and, as you say, something sacred.

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.

Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.

I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.

As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.

...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?

I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.

Art is to console those who are broken by life.

If you work with love and intelligence, you develop a kind of armour against people's opinions, just because of the sincerity of your love for nature and art. Nature is also severe and, to put it that way, hard, but never deceives and always helps you to move forward.

Art demands constant observation.

The lamps are burning and the starry sky is over it all.

If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time doing what? He studies a single blade of grass.

How rich art is, if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never empty of thoughts or truly lonely, never alone.

If you study Japanese art you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant and then the seasons, the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure. So he passes his life, and life is too short to do the whole.

Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and continuous observations. By persistent, I mean not only continuous work, but also not giving up your opinion at the bidding of such and such a person.

Art is jealous, and demands our whole strength ... .

All art is a gift. It is first of all a gift that the maker can do it. It is then a gift to someone else, whether they pay for it or not. The wonder of it is that we cannot get the production of these gifts stopped. Art is life seeking itself. It is our intractable expressions of love for the beauties, ideas and epiphanies we regularly find. I framed the painting. It's now hanging in our den. "I have walked this earth for 30 years, and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir.

Do you know that drawing with words is also an art... ?

It's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important.

There is a sun, a light that for want of another word I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow, pale golden citron. How lovely yellow is!

As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.

Well, I dare not allow myself any illusions, and I am afraid it may never happen that Father and Mother will really appreciate my art. It is not their fault; we do not see the same things with the same eyes, or have the same thoughts raised in us by them. They will never be able to understand what painting is.

God sends us pieces of art so that we may see ourselves in them

It is the painting that makes me so happy these days.

Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle - more like music and less like sculpture - and above all it promises color. If only it keeps this promise.

We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words

Try to walk as much as you can, and keep your love for nature, for that is the true way to learn to understand art more and more. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see her. If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere.

What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.

I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too.

The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray.

Art is something greater and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from a man's soul.

In a painting I want to say something comforting.

It was Richepin who said somewhere, 'The love of art means loss of real love'... True, but on the other hand, real love makes you disgusted with art.

Art is but imitation of nature.