One of the main reasons I paint is because I think nature is so wonderful. I want to try to get my feelings of that down on canvas, if possible.
Although not of the quality of my later work, I feel there is some quality to it [my early work] in an art sense, and probably some additional quality in a biographical sense.
My goal is to make all my paintings clear and realistic, even more understandable than a photograph.
I feel that when I am painting, it is a form of worship. I see how wonderful nature is and how wonderful art is... and by trying to produce these works of art, I feel that I am just showing my appreciation of these creations.
I'm going to just sit down for a couple of weeks and do nothing but read who-dunnits and Art books. I feel my work is getting a bit dull and mechanical and this proposed resting should work up some enthusiasm in me.
It is a matter mostly of having the time to spare from my finished paintings to put in on travelling and sketching out of doors.
I was doing something that the officials or art commission probably didn't consider important... I was experimenting with different kinds of realistic art, impressionism and the more decorative compositions of different forms of painting, which took away from the earlier photographic realism that I was doing.
As you can see, at my age - 48 - Art is still one big experiment.
It feels much better to me to think that an artist is working to show his appreciation of what already has been created than creating things himself.
Leonardo's Mona Lisa sure would have lost out if he had spent only 2 of the 4 or 5 years he took to complete it. It is thinking about him and Ryder, among others, that partly makes me feel so awful to send away a 'half-baked' painting.
Worry, about the 'thousand and one' details entailed. My one-track mind has to be relieved of these worries completely or I cannot get started working on my paintings, or even get to sleep at night.
Unfortunately when I start to talk or when someone watches over my shoulders my pencil either stops or I draw meaningless lines.
I am hoping that, with the added wisdom of old age, I can still look ahead for an improvement in tone, line, colour and composition.
I am trying to get my paintings a bit lighter in tone, as some of my recent oils have been mistaken for night scenes.
I don't know just what, but there will have to be some drastic changes made besides cutting down on boating to get my mind more on painting.
If I didn't have a conviction that a serious painter can portray Nature more profoundly than the best colour photography, I'd probably give it all up or go abstract or take up photography.
The small figures that appear in my paintings are there only because they were there when I was working from nature on my preliminary sketches with pencil.
The primitive style makes nature look like stage scenery.
At present I am using a good sized bedroom in the 2 bedroom house here as a studio, and it is large enough to step back from my canvases, and has a good north light. It should serve very well until I can afford to have the storeroom half of the back building lined and insulated and a chimney put in. That may be in about two years.
I felt landscapes would sell more readily, and not being equipped psychologically to be a teacher or commercial artist, that was important.
I hope my work isn't dismissed by the critics as illustration or photography.
It is... treading on dangerous ground to paint the picturesque as I am at times doing.
One of the things I like about our contract is that you have relieved me of a great deal of personal interviewing and corresponding, among other things, which allows me a lot more time for painting.
I try to do much of the necessary alteration on the black and white [cartoons] rather than leave it to be done on the paintings.
It is definitely mostly due to the invention of the camera that all this design and emphasized paint quality have come into painting.
