The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.
After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.
I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions.
The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.
What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.
No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.
