he was the father of us all
– Pablo Picasso
Fruits … like having their portrait painted.
They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading.
Their thought is given off with their perfumes.
They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left,
the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen.
The Landscape becomes reflective, human, and thinks itself though me.
I make it an object, let it project itself and endure within my painting …
I become the subjective consciousness of the landscape,
and my painting becomes its objective consciousness.
–
A minute in the world’s life passes!
To paint it in its reality, and forget everything for that!
To become that minute, to be the sensitive plate …
give the image of what we see, forgetting everything
that has happened before our time.
–
When I start thinking, everything’s lost.
I am the primitive of the method I have invented.
Get to the heart of what is before you!
The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed,
will set off a revolution.
The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.
It’s so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.
I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping
and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.
Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.
Here, on the river’s verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place,
simply leaning a little more to right or left.
Pure drawing is an abstraction.
Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.
–
I want to die painting.
– Paul Cézanne 1839 – 1906
For more about nondual perception and Cézanne see Rupert Spira‘s essay:
also
David Bohm, Paul Cézanne and Creativity, by F David Peat
Conversations with Cézanne
– Michael Doran
the awakened eye 