Claude Monet on Colors

“I'm chasing the merest sliver of color. It's my own fault, I want to grasp the intangible. It's terrible how the light runs out, taking color with it. Color, any color, lasts a second, sometimes three of four minutes at the most.”

“When you go out to paint try to forget what object you have before you—a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think, here is a little streak of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it emerges as your own naive impression of the scene before you. I would like to paint the way a bird sings.”