California Impressionists

The above painting is by William Wendt, one of many wonderful California Impressionists.

As I have not had the time nor the motivation to pick up my brush the past few days, I have been catching up on my reading. I have a book checked out of the library that is fast coming due, and I have reached my limit of renewals. With that in mind, I have been perusing the book and reading chapters as they interest me. This morning I read a quote written by an art essayist, Michael Willliams. His essay was included in the volume produced in conjunction with the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition of 1915 in San Fransisco on the art and artists included in the art exhibition halls. He identified the spirtual roots of California art in his essay titled "The Pageant of California Art." Here is the quote that touched me enough to want to share it:

"Unless art, like, man, believes in and is obedient to the spirit of God, it is doomed to madness, decay, and death... (California) is a a state of natural health. It is the land of the great out of doors, a region where art may touch the life-giving bosom of Mother Earth once more, and be fructified anew; where it may put aside its dreary, tortuous intellectualism and the blighting madness of self-deificiation, and turn its eyes once again to the stars, to the great mountains, and to the sea, not merely for their own sakes, but because, real and actual as they are, they are but symbols of divine realities."