I have always believed that it is important to learn to draw, considering drawing to be one of the artist's most valuable tools of expression.

That drawing shows the artist's soul most directly, is also true... and when brush-strokes show in a painting, painting becomes drawing with a brush.

It seems that drawing has been lost to many artists who are no longer interested in the structure of things, but are after the sensual and seductive processes of surfaces and techniques.

"I have always tried to hide my own efforts and wished my works to have the lightness and joyousness of a springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labours it has cost. So I am afraid that the young, seeing in my work only the apparent facility and negligence in the drawing, will use this as an excuse for dispension with certain efforts which I believe necessary.

The few exhibitions that I have had the opportunity of seeing during these last years make me fear that the young painters are avoiding the slow and painful preparation which is necessary for the education of any contemporary painter who claims to construct by color alone.

This slow painful work is indispensable. Indeed, if gardens were not dug over at the proper time, they would soon be good for nothing. Do we not first have to clear, and then cultivate, the ground at each season of the year? When an artist has not known how to prepare his flowering period, by work which bears little resemblance to the final result, he has a short future before him: or when an artist who has `arrived' no longer feels the necessity of getting back to earth from time to time, he begins to go around in circles repeating himself, until by this very repetition, his curiosity is extinguished." (20)
(Letter to Henry Clifford from Henri Matisse, `Facility in Painting', Vence, February 14, 1948)


"EVERYONE IS ACQUAINTED WITH DOGS AND HORSES SINCE THEY ARE SEEN DAILY. TO REPRODUCE THEIR LIKENESS IS VERY DIFFICULT. ON THE OTHER HAND, SINCE DEMONS, AND SPIRITUAL BEINGS HAVE NO DEFINITE FORM AND SINCE NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN THEM THEY ARE EASY TO EXECUTE" (21)
Old Chinese Saying




"I have learned to measure and to observe and to seek for broad lines. So what seemed to be impossible before is gradually becoming possible now, thank God. I have drawn five times over a man with a spade, a digger, in different positions, a sower twice, diggers, sowers, ploughers, male and female, they are what I must draw continually... I no longer stand helpless before nature, as I used to... the drawings I have done lately have little resemblance to those I used to do." (22)
Vincent Van Gogh





20. Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, (Berkeley and L.A., Cal., U. of California Press, 1968), p.20
21. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, (Princeton, N.J., U.S.A., Princeton University Press, 1972), p.269
22. Marc Edo Talbaut, Vincent Van Gogh, (N.Y., U.S.A., Alpine Fine Arts Collection, Ltd., 1981), p.76