William Congdon
A painter must loathe his medium - nothing more boring than the physicals of painting to overcome, to arrive at, a pure image. There is no getting around the love for an idea (image) - all the knowledge, passion, etc. counts for nothing. if you can't lose yourself and be possessed, if you haven't the courage to suffer, be possessed by an image - don't paint. Any section of a painting that is 'worked on rather than inspired cannot be alive; there is no working a painting, only breathing it. If you have a battle, it is because the object intervened. Don't look at a painting (after doing it) unless you are in a painting mood, otherwise you'll see only trivia...

A painter's studio walls should be empty. He should aspire to people them but, not succeeding, is constantly driven onward. If there are old hats on the wall, you can only be working in submissive turns of those hats. Not even a print of 'Mona Lisa' or be Picasso. They have nothing to do with you. They are past products only valid of another art, another moment of history. You must create your own moment, but know that even that will have left you by the moment of its creation, so that you cannot even put one of your own on the wall. Let your heart be your only wall, and people it with visions and, if you are lucky, paintings... As soon as you cease to discover yourself in them, take them down, for by now others are crowding your heart.

Must never approach painting, nor think of painting, unless equipped with an image or passion. Any other motive is a waste of time. There is zero to learn, to talk about. Painters are not colleagues, except in the sense of being human beings. Painting is not a thing to be conscious of or about until after it is done. Intelligence enters into it only to know [your] self enough not to be deluded into nursing false images. To know that your image is life is not easy, especially in these times. But if it is life, others will know.

Use a knife - never a brush which only compromises. A knife constructs! - without tricks, Don't presume to pick, mix, chose your colors, but toss a sea and fish for gold in it. It comes with courage and freedom. Don't mix colours - mix ideas, feelings. It is not important that you see in terms of a painting - but enough in terms of the subject, so that, however diverse seeming a painting results [which] bears the inner life of that subject. Let it surprise you - enjoy yourself. Don't insist on the subject (idea). That the painting lives is more than the subject. And it will live if you Ioved the idea, no matter how much the image that results diverges (seems to diverge) from your original idea.

Notes Feb-March '54'
William Congdon (b. Providence, Rhode Island, USA, 1912)