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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.
I PREFER the café of the people, and never visit any that has an exclusive atmosphere unless I am obliged. I do not care to see many rich people at one time. It was ordained that the percentage of rich should always be small, therefore a crowd of them in one spot is bad form, often bad colour, and mostly confusion. A group of artisans never gives me any unpleasant thoughts: it is the natural order of things; the poor were regarded by Our Lord as the multitude.