NOTES
We learn from both our successes, and our failures. But, the knowledge we gain from the latter tends to be the more profound of the two-accumed knowledge’s.
You must have heart and follow it. If you're not following your heart, what's the point?
The simple solutions to complex problems can often result in a better outcome.
No one outside of ourselves has a legitimate right to pass judgment on the way we depict our subject. Painting is not about how we see, but how the artist sees.
Times will be hard, but we need to make a choice between what’s right and what’s easy.
You can teach anybody anything; they just have to want to learn it.
Your paintings are talking to you. They are telling you what you are doing right, and what you are doing wrong. Learn from them.
Make it loose, but still well drawn.
Paintings and drawings evoke a state of the artists mind. They express states of life as only the artist sees and comprehends. They are real historical documents pertaining to the intimate life of people while they unconsciously live their lives. They capture the unnoticed adventure that underlines the routine of daily life.
Less is more.
"All the past up to a moment ago is your legacy. You have a right to it. The works of ancient masters, those of the student next to you, the remark let drop a moment ago; all is experience, race experience." - Robert Henri
"Much can be done with little." - Robert Henri
"Things being as they are, the life of an artist is a battle where in great economy must be exercised. The kind of economy, which will result in moments of the purest freedom in spite of the world’s exactions." - Robert Henri
"The artist who draws the spirit of his sitter accomplishes more than the man who paints a portrait." - Robert Henri
"People say: 'It is only a sketch'. It takes the genius of a real artist to make a good sketch – to express the most important things in life – the fairness of a face – to represent air and light and to do it all with such simple shorthand means. One must have wit to make a sketch. Pictures that have months of labor expended on them may be more incomplete than a sketch." – Robert Henri
"See, Observe, Remember." – The Famous Artists Course
"Forget about the exhibitions and the juries. Think less of the success of the by-product and you will have more success with it. Keep living. And that means keep on painting." –Robert Henri
"The best advice I have ever given to students who have studied under me has been: 'Educate yourself, do not let me educate you. Use me, do not be used by me.'" -Robert Henri
"The appreciation of art should not be considered as merely a pleasurable pastime. To apprehend beauty is to work for it. It is a mighty and entrancing effort, and the enjoyment of a picture is not only in the pleasure it inspires, but in the comprehension of the new order of construction used in its making." -Robert Henri
"Painting is the expression of ideas in their permanent form. It is the giving of evidence. It is the study of our lives, our environment. The American who is useful as an artist is one who studies his own life and records his experiences; in this way he gives evidence. If a man or woman has something to say they will find a way to say it." –Robert Henri
"There is the heart and the mind; the Puritan idea is that the mind must be master. I think the heart should be master and the mind the tool of the heart." –Robert Henri
"There is little use in painting – in living in fact – unless you let yourself grow your natural course." -Robert Henri
"The goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art. Art is the result." – Robert Henri
"Art is, after all, only a trace – like a footprint, which shows that one, has walked bravely and in great happiness. Those who live in full play of their faculties become master economists; they understand the relative value of things. Freedom can only be obtained through an understanding of basic order. Basic order is underlying all life." – Robert Henri