Quotes on Choosing a Subject from "Composition of Outdoor Painting" by Edgar Payne

"The High Sierras" by Edgar Payne

Recently I've been digesting "Composition of Outdoor Painting" by artist Edgar Payne (while sitting indoors, waiting for my husband as he does his physical therapy). More than once in a while, I stop and highlight one of Payne's thought-provoking insights, and these are what I'd like to share with you in the next few days:

• William M. Chase admonished his students to develop appreciation, have high ideals, select inspiring motives, paint in a grand style, and never be satisfied with reaching for a mere star but for the greatest one.
  
  
• While it is necessary that the painter look for visual qualities in nature, he needs also to sense attributes which are beyond vision. The power is given to him to feel the mystery and charm of fleeting clouds; the immensity and depth of blue skies and atmospheric distances; the grace and rhythm of living and expanding trees and other growths; the nobility, grandeur and strength of mighty peaks; the endless movement and vitality of the sea and its forms. All these and many more offer unlimited material for worthy ideas. The motive selected should not include anything that disturbs the complete ideology of beauty or pure aesthetic pleasure.
  
  
• When approaching nature for depiction, the primary consideration is the station point which will give the best translation of the motive. To get a proper view and idea of any subject, one should study it from several angles. The idea is to locate the easel at a point which will reveal desirable variations, not only of the size of masses but quality in line, values and color.
  
  
• The location of the easel should be in a position where the shadowed parts and lighted areas will suggest the proper measures, that is, the unequal distribution of light and dark.