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5A
9 December 1944
I was reading something about Marsden Hartley's statement of his recent attitude, where he tried to intellectualize his expression. He felt that emotional painting was distasteful, although he had gone through that stage, and he remarked that really great painting should be intellectualized. I disagree completely with his attitude. A painter intellectualizes or thinks about his own work when he is not painting. After he has analyzed his work, a definite attitude is taken for further work on the same canvas, or a new idea for a new canvas, But when he is actually painting, I don't see how there is room for even a minute's thought about one way or the other. Perhaps during the process of painting he may have a psychological reaction, an emotional reaction, or an intellectual reaction. It does not matter, whatever it is.
I strongly believe that we all paint out experience, and while actually painting there is no room for anything between the canvas and the artist. One can almost say he is unaware of any but those two things. The mind is so concentrated as to be in a hypnotic state. Anything that happens in that process has nothing to be analysed about it. Sometimes good things happen, sometimes bad things, but you don't analyse each brush stroke. People will make comments on that picture, or criticise it when it is finished. They can call it anything they want, but the painter himself does not classify his work into any isms. We are all born a certain way, any no matter how much the painter may think he would like to try another way, his self is much stronger, and pulls him back into his own way. 
I feel that the trouble with Hartley's work is that there is a conflict, although he has painted good pictures. I always thought his own way was emotional painting, yet he [[strikeout]] sometimes [[/strikeout]] borrowed other painters' ideas, and sometimes intellectualized it. Such painting