Viewing page 178 of 207

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

#16. Jan 13.-12. The borax neither waterproofs the white nor prevents the superlaid tints of color from sinking and mottling on it as on blotting paper. - I painted sky and all else in pure blues, rose, yellow, small strokes, mechanically, white between. The whole looked utterly ineffective. Then I strengthened the blue sky, broadened all white spaces of horizon, around houses, all roofs and walls and effected powerful pictorial masses of contrasting colors in

[[image - small sketch of a house in ink, indicating different colors for each part of it: supposedly mountain, upper left part of sketch - "rose viol"; front part of house, left wall - "orange"; front part, right wall - "white"; front part, roof - "white"; roof, horizontally - "greenblue"; shaded horizontal wall, right side - "deep blue"; shaded horizontal wall, bottom - "deepest crimson scarlet"]]

such a way that the origin of actual illumination and color is still [[strikethrough]] dio [[/strikthrough]] traceble in this new individual and powerful conception. The things in their color, which make the scene, speak to me, now: I am the sky, I am blue, a grand mass of blues, not flat; cold; deep, swallowing up white - light; I am the mountain, rose-violett, a long powerful beakbone mass raised over the round of the earth; I am a house, a mass, as each animal is a mass, of my own shape and color, erected crudely, lonely, up here, above here and there rows of other low-standing houses; I am a mass of inert clay-sand, white, opaque; I am a dry cold mass of weeds and earth borrowing gold yellow from the brilliant sun, cut thro' by a rose white path. e.t.c. The color masses are all of comparable similar size and weight and force of tone and their outlines finally united by a network of white lands, expressing light, cold, barreness. Hence I have all the character and color that scene is capable of, pictorially and set it down with full sweep of brush over the mechanical preparation. Entirely removed from either a weak illustration, colored foto (the proportions and colors of the scene are changed) or naturalistic ptg, also contrary to the general tonal & mood-color quality of Pointillistic air-light idea; rather like Italian or Rubens. Figure composition with colorite of dress (each object of
[[in pencil]] (140 [[/in pencil]]