Charles Hawthorne: Seeing Beauty

"A Study in White"
by Charles Hawthorne

"A great composer could find inspiration for a symphony in a subject as simple as the tinkle of water in a dish pan. So can we find beauty in ordinary places and subjects. The untrained eye does not see beauty in all things - it's our profession to train ourselves to see it and transmit it to the less fortunate. The layman cares for incident in a picture but the artist cares rather for the beauty of one spot of color coming against another, not a literary beauty. There are just so many tones in music and just so many colors but it's the beautiful combination that makes a masterpiece.

It is beautifully simple, painting - all we have to do is to get the color notes in their proper relations. The juxtaposition of spots of color is the only way and he who sees that the finest is the greatest man. I want you to learn to see more beautifully, just as if you were studying music and tried to get the finer harmony more and more truly all the time.

You must find the beauty of the thing before you start. You cannot bring reason to bear on painting - the eye looks up and gets an impression and that is what you want to register. Good painting is an excitement, an aesthetic emotion..." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)