A Couple of Favorite Quotes

"Fall Grove"
Oil on Panel
30x40"
2009

Well, for a while there I was bad about posting because I was sick and not painting and had nothing to say. Now I'm feeling better, but I haven't been posting because I've been swamped meeting deadlines after two months of getting nothing done! If it's not one thing, it's another I suppose.

Anyhow, I just wanted to pass along a couple of quotes by William Wendt that I wrote down when I was reading through the catalog for last year's show at the Laguna Museum. Wendt is one of my favorite landscape painters, and I would have loved to see the show. Alas, I have to be happy with the catalog, which, luckily, is fantastic.

"Nature had more to say than can be caught in a minute, she has lessons for us that may take a lifetime in the learning and I believe she intended that we landscape painters should mix brains with our paint."

I love how he speaks of landscape painting as a lifetime endeavor, and dismisses the idea that it isn't intellectual. I also love this one, which explains so well why I love wilderness and landscape painting:

"Here, the heart of man becomes impressionable. Here, away from conflicting creeds and sects, away from the soul-destroying hurly-burly of life, it feels that the world is beautiful, that man is his brother, that God is good."