You form a society: that limits you. Adopt a name, and you've limited yourself again; draw up a constitution and bylaws and you've made a groove, a rut, that hampers your growth. You think you can fix your course and move straight along it. But sometimes the important thing is to strike out sidewise.

Robert Henri

Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.

Robert Henri

ocean beach thinking

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.

Robert Henri

artist life book

Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.

Robert Henri

beautiful beauty life

The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to think it through. You have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways. We like sympathy and we like to be in company. It is easier than going it alone. But alone one gets acquainted with himself, grows up and on, not stopping with the crowd. It costs to do this. If you succeed somewhat you may have to pay for it as well as enjoy it all your life.

Robert Henri

growing-up art thinking

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual- become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.

Robert Henri

expression reality people

The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

Robert Henri

creativity inspiring art

In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?

Robert Henri

real believe art

No work of Art is really ever finished. They only stop at good places.

Robert Henri

good-place finished art

Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition.

Robert Henri

bridges running art

Do whatever you do intensely.

Robert Henri

focus enthusiasm

I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.

Robert Henri

bad-ass mean art

Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.

Robert Henri

goes-on made facts

An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it.

Robert Henri

technique shining artist

Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life's experience.

Robert Henri

expression inspiring art

Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing.

Robert Henri

singing heart song

Let every student enter the school with this advice. No matter how good the school is, his education is in his own hands. All education must be self education.

Robert Henri

self hands school

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.

Robert Henri

clairvoyant moments usual

Art is an outsider, a gypsy over the face of the earth.

Robert Henri

outsiders faces art

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it.

Robert Henri

singing dancing should

Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see today? How shall I use what I know, and how shall I avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition.

Robert Henri

use struggle yesterday