Julia Sutliff
The experience of looking at nature is thrilling – the movement, the shadows, the play of light – it’s a whirlwind of sensation and emotion. My feeling is that it’s not enough to take the elements of a scene and copy them. Better to invent, and try to match the unfolding drama and flux with the movement of your brush, your half-complete impressions, your choice of color, choice of brush, etc. It’s the only way to attempt to match wits with nature -- to make a painting come even close to being as exciting as nature itself.
And it seems important to try to work with what Corot called “confidence,” Van Gogh “brio,” and Delacroix “extreme daring.” We want to be free from fear, and perhaps when we see fearlessness in an artist’s work, it moves us as would any act of daring, or passionate abandon, or selflessness, or love.