Light in Nature creates the movement of colors.
I am very much afraid of definitions, and yet one is almost forced to make them. One must take care, too, not to be inhibited by them.
First of all, I always see the sun! The way I want to identify myself and others is with halos here and there halos, movements of color. And that, I believe, is rhythm.
Direct observation of the luminous essence of nature is for me indispensable.
But what is of great importance to me is observation of the movement of colors.
Art in Nature is rhythmic and has a horror of constraint.
If Art relates itself to an Object, it becomes descriptive, divisionist, literary.
Impressionism; it is the birth of Light in painting.
In this movement of colors I find the essence, which does not arise from a system, or an a priori theory.
On the other hand, the artist has much to do in the realm of color construction, which is so little explored and so obscure, and hardly dates back any farther than to the beginning of Impressionism.
Light comes to us by the sensibility. Without visual sensibility there is no light, no movement.
Nature engenders the science of painting.
I say it is indispensable to look ahead of and behind oneself in the present. If there is such a thing as tradition, and I believe there is, it can only exist in the sense of the most profound movements of culture.
Our understanding is correlative to our perception.
It is this research into pure painting that is the problem at the present moment. I do not know any painters in Paris who are really searching for this ideal world.