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We have various ways of expression. To complain because an [[strikethrough]] arti [[/strikethrough]] artist paints as he does is to wish him to be a different creature and that is a foolish bit of criticism. We should not knit the brow and worry over art. There is every kind you know to choose from. Conservatives of every shade, the idealists on Camino del Monte Sol and the Taos realist who said "Paint just what you see and throw in a little poetry". If we might forget forevermore to knit the brow and worry over art it would not only lighten the cares of the layman, but it would mean joy for the artist who would no longer hear "Oh why does he paint like that? Why will he paint like this? Oh paint us but Sunday afternoons and things that we have known--houses that we have lived in and horses the color of horses that we have seen. Paint in the manner of Sargent or don't paint at all".

We are everyone of us far more sincere than you credit us with being. We are trying our best to paint for you and for ourselves pictures that possess a poise, balance and sturdiness that will renew your belief and joy in life every time you see them--long after the merely pretty or clever pictures have cloyed and fretted you. Marsden Hartley said that "Painting is for the artist but the key of Heaven that he might open another door for the world's weary eye".

We must use each his own imagination in opening this door, and while our concern is not with especial objects or people in the Southwest,-- it is with life, and according to the measure in which we abundantly or meagerly live and sense that life we will give at last abundantly or meagerly to him who is able to receive.

Olive Rush 

Transcription Notes:
updated based on the new guidance