Hawthorne on Painting (Dover Art Instruction)

by Charles W. Hawthorne

What people subconsciously are interested in is the expression of beauty, something that helps them through the humdrum day, something that shocks them out of themselves and something that makes them believe in the beauty and the glory of human existence.

We must teach ourselves to see the beauty of the ugly, to see the beauty of the commonplace. It is so much greater to make much out of little than to make little out of much—better to make a big thing out of a little subject than to make a little thing out of a big one.

Real sentiment in art comes as it does in music from the way one tone comes against another independently of the literary quality of the subject—the way spots of color come together produces painting.

Good painting is an excitement, an aesthetic emotion—reasonable painting destroys emotion.

Every successful canvas has been painted from the point of view of a student, for a great painter is always a student.