Essays on Painting

Carol & Oil Lamp
joy to behold. Largely speaking, abstractions work because of where they
are placed, they still have to be proportionate and in the right place.
It is my particular duty as an artist to allocate priorities to the forms in
front of me. I am the one in charge, I am entrusted with the privilege to
extract, to establish order, to play down some things and to emphasize
others and to change according to my own vision. There are always those
who are content to paint subjects ‘the way it was’. I believe that an artist
must take charge, where there is full control there is also full responsibility,
each of us must bear this for our work.
Artists are not cameras. We must be obliged at some stage or other to
abstract what we see and convert it into shapes and forms that are paintable.
SEEING SHAPES INSTEAD OF OBJECTS
30
Each work of art is itself a symbol. You do not paint things but the
forms of things. You cannot create skies, grass, and birds, but you
can create symbols that evoke these things. Your painting symbol