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3

to exhibit paintings by Negroes to the present day. Where I am an exhibitor.

From 1950 to 1960, the study of creative painting at the American University released me from the limitations of the past and opened the door to creativity. Creative art, it has been said, is for all times, and is therefore independent of time. It is of all ages, of every land and if by this we merely mean that the creative spirit in man which produces a picture or a statue is common to the whole civilized world, independently of age, race, and nationality, the statement may stand unchallenged.

Whistler one said that art is cosmopolitan. The influence of nationality and physical and politica conditions has indeed been somewhat unduly emphasized by critics and philosophers. But it is obvious that the life, character and history of a nation must be to no small degree reflected in its history. Art is inevitably the expression of external conditions, modified though they may be by the genius and personality of the artist. The painter's inspiration must ultimately be derived to a large extent from what he sees and hears around him in daily life and from the traditions of which he has been a part since childhood. These he reproduces with more or less exactness, according to his own temperament and habits. As a rule he takes what is nearest and therefore most familiar.

So the making of a picture involved two processes: a taking in of the impressions and a giving out ot it by visible expression--a seeing of the subject with the visual and mental eye, and a communicating of what has been