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I've found from years of trial that the only way I can work is to make sketches in pencil from Nature, purely as reference material for future use in the studio.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It takes more time to rework a painting than it takes to fill in the canvas in the first place. I wish I could get them all right with the first coat like many of the old masters could, but seem destined to have to rework to make them even passable.
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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.
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It is... treading on dangerous ground to paint the picturesque as I am at times doing.
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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.
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The primitive style makes nature look like stage scenery.
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As you can see, at my age - 48 - Art is still one big experiment.
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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.
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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.
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My goal is to make all my paintings clear and realistic, even more understandable than a photograph.
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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.
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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.
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It is definitely mostly due to the invention of the camera that all this design and emphasized paint quality have come into painting.
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When I see these primitive effects coming into my pictures subconsciously, even though the perspective may be slightly out, I leave them in if it helps the general composition.
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I am trying to get my paintings a bit lighter in tone, as some of my recent oils have been mistaken for night scenes.
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I hope my work isn't dismissed by the critics as illustration or photography.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It would be nice once during my life to go over [to Europe] and study the original paintings of the Masters.