Status Updates From Composition of Outdoor Pain...

After about 1.5 years I’m only on page 53 but I still don’t feel like I’ve been reading slowly enough. I think there’s more than a lifetime’s wisdom in this small book. The way Payne reveres nature inspires the reader to learn to paint as a means to put reverence of nature into practice as an offering to the beauty of the casual arrangement of things outdoors

I love that, despite this being a VERY old book, he’s like “artists are always going to be either manic or depressed & you gotta learn how to withstand depression even when you feel like your work sucks”. Validating to know this was always a thing for artists.

"If one followed altogether only that which has been done and has no new ideas, art would indeed fail and become merely a poor imitation of existing work. New thought is essential, yet, this considered alone, all truths and principles
set aside, results would be equally disastrous and lead entirely to eccentricity, idiosyncrasy, and eventually to demoralization as far as true artistic quality is concerned."