Odilon Redon

When the soul is powerful, the work is as well.

They misunderstand the studies of Corot which are masterpieces of clumsiness: the mind and the eye control everything, the hand is a slave under observation.

The artist always has an eye, an eye that sees.

To see and to see well will always be the first precursor to the art of painting, this is true for every century. But it is also important to know the nature of the eye that is watching, to look for the cause of feelings experienced by the artist and communicated to the amateur – even if the artist himself is one – to see, in one word, if his gift is good-natured, and well structured; and that is not the end of the analysts and the critics jobs.

I am asked about the certainty in my art. You have to have the good sense to confess, without argument and without deceiving anyone, that you are certain only of the art that you have created. All other art lives in the unknown, in a mystery where its potentiality could blossom. My beliefs appear inscribed in those works resulting from my personal effort across all the pedagogical disciplines; they are simply, official or not, of the time I have lived in.

The eye is indispensable to the absorption of the elements which feed it, as well as to our soul, and whoever, in a certain measure has the faculty of sight, but is incapable of seeing justice, of seeing the truth, will have an incomplete intelligence. To see is to spontaneously be able to identify the relationships between things.

would advise me to capture the contour of a shape I could see, my heart pounding. Under the pretext of simplification (why?) he would make me close my eyes, blocking out all the light and neglecting my vision of material. I was never able to force myself. I can only sense the shadows, the visible depth; each contour was without a doubt an abstraction. This teaching method did not match my character and the teacher received the most obscure of my natural talents, misreading everything. He understood nothing about me. I could see that his willing eyes were closed to what I could see in mine.

“Art is a state of being, a memory of expansive life, and imagine that we, restricted and weak, are in need of its support.”

— Odilon Redon