At a recent studio visit from a mentor I was assistant to when I first moved to New York many years ago, she asked me about my painting.  After the visit I thought about it a lot. I was never comfortable with a lot of verbiage about my painting. However I was reading essays by Paul Valery.  One of the essays is titled "About Corot." I've studied Corot's work for years and continues to be my favorite painter.  Paul Valery's excerpt sumps up, better than I ever could verbalize, my similar beliefs and attitudes about painting.

"The aim is not to reproduce the object but to produce upon us (the viewer) the impression the object makes on the painter, which requires and involves an indefinably subtle conjunction of visual truth with actuality of feeling."