The profanity of paint

Chapter 15: 14. The Closed Ear

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About This Book

A collection of short, reflective essays by a painter that privilege romantic vision and intuition over technical realism, treating colour as a mutable, almost spiritual force beyond pigments. Through meditations on trees and the limits of representation, the author argues that literal training and excessive knowledge can stifle true artistic feeling, and he champions silence, poetic language, and personal temperament as essential to creation. Individual chapters address rhythm, relation, critics, the middle class, extravagance, tragedy, genius, and the idea of a masterpiece, concluding with moral reflections on the artist’s mission and the tension between perception and portrayal.

14. The Closed Ear

IF I listened attentively to the things that others say my work would lose character. To pay attention to criticism is to pursue the process of laboured refinement which reduces all to the commonplace. Critics with much knowledge are people with retrospective minds; they cannot be of use to the born painter whose work is creative. Knowledge is related to things already accomplished; but the vast unexplored fields open to creative genius are beyond the range of all critical analysis. The painter, more than any other, lives a life of spiritual change.

Look at the sky! The luminaries return, return, return! To the scientist they move with regularity and precision; but to the romanticist they shed new light every moment. The astronomer knows the facts: the poet feels the truth!