"What do I want to express? The subject means little. The arrangement, the design, colour, shape, depth, light, space, mood, movement, balance, not one or all of these fills the bill. There is something additional, a breath that draws your breath into its breathing, a heartbeat that pounds on yours, a recognition of the oneness of all things."
—Emily Carr

“(He) looks as comfortable as a pope in Francis Bacon's headlights"

"One day I made a drawing of a hillside. The wind was blowing. I chose three forms from the planes on the sides of the trees, and three colors, and black and white. From these was made a rhythmic painting which expressed the spirit of the whole thing."
—Arthur Dove

"The world of experience, as it is revealed to our sense and our understanding, is always chaotic. Each of us must seek to organize so many conflicting facts, impressions or sensations in some kind of understandable synthesis, I mean in a Weltanschauung which will allow one to face the world as an individual, without being overwhelmed by the kaleidoscopic flow and swirl of phenomena. It is the task of the artist to illustrate this process, to organize the chaos of the visible world in patterns from which some meaning can emerge."

"The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order that reveal themselves both in nature and the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison, and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole."

"Let's not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it."