By Lee Ann Sporn
Note from Sarah J Hart: When I spoke with Dr. Sporn, she shared this quote, from artist and writer Harold Weston, which she said resonated with her deeply:
“My belief was that each instance of creative work springs from emotional reactions stimulated within the artist by anything, a pattern in the dust even, and not from recording visual observations. If the pictorial content of a painting has any significance, it will be because the essential qualities of the landscape, person, or object depicted is sensed or known by the artist, however patterned, simplified, or abstracted the final product may be. John Mrin once said to me, “If a man wants to paint a mountain, let him fish its streams first.”
-Harold Weston