Matisse

Henri Matisse, Sur la Terrace

"It seems to me that the way art may be said to imitate nature is by the life that the creative worker infuses into that work of art; the work will then appear as fertile and as possessed of the same power to thrill, the same resplendent beauty that we find in the works of nature. Great love is needed to achieve that patient striving towards truth, that flowing warmth and an analytic profundity that accompanies the birth of any work of art; but is not love the origin of all creation?"
Henri Matisse, "Matisse on Art", Jack D. Flam (Phaidon 1978)