"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun." - Pablo Picaso (attributed, quoted by Edith Sitwell in Fire of the Mind)
"I feel that there is great danger in so valuing and looking for pattern and design as to overlook the bigger significance, Spirit, the gist of the whole thing. We pick out one pleasing note and tinkle it regardless of the whole tune. In the forest think of the forest, not of the tree and that but the singing movement of the whole. I suppose that is what the abstractionists are trying to do, boil the whole thing down to a symbol, but that seems to me rather like cutting a flower out of cardboard. The form may be correct but where's the smell and the cool tenderness of the petal." - Emily Carr (Hundreds and Thousands)