Below is a comment I submitted on the Painters Key site (See link at foot.) in response to an artists question concerning the difficulty of releasing the eye and mind towards a more abstract approach to landscape. This question has interested me for a long time as there are a large number of examples who have the mistaken belief that abstract equates to invented mannerism or style.'Cezanne answers the question of the vast divide between the integrity of expression of imaginative schemes and devices and the illusory search for the infinity of nature and its ever-changing guise. By placing brush marks over the canvas, based upon observations of shape and spatiality for themselves rather than what they describe, Cezanne achieved works which recreated nature at its source.
When you find the delight of being in tune with the subject's source in the realization that you are an important part of nature's dynamic principle, you win twice over. The work comes out of that experience. Your vision, rather than just your seeing, displays a thousand or more possible paintings in the simplest things.
http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/personal-spin.asp
