[Tom Edgerton]

Boys, BOYS!

We all see the value of an honest debate about materials and methods, even a spirited one, and welcome it. That often creates the opportunity to learn about another's approach. I think the objection here is when the discussion is a thinly veiled excuse for personal attack. None of us here is so dumb that we can't perceive the difference.

Speaking for myself, I find it extremely tiresome to wade through three pages of essentially "Nyah, nyah, nyah!" to reach a small kernel of usable information. So again, I think we all know the difference between a passionate discussion of technique and materials and saying, "If you use THIS color, I have serious problems with your mother." I find the former illuminating, the latter boring.

To Marvin's defense, I think he gets a bad rap in this forum for being merely opinionated. In his workshop, he wasn't oppressively militant about his palette vs. another, and didn't require that we use it. But he's very outspoken about how useful it's been for him, and why, and that it might be so for us. A position about which I find nothing offensive, as it springs from personal experience. In his posts here, he says nothing in regard to the character of those who use brilliant cads, or other palettes. He's also never asserted that his palette is a groundbreaking Mattelson innovation, merely his personal refinement of what's come before from Paxton and Reilly. I see no self-aggrandizement or ego there.

To me, the finest paintings have a tension or interplay between passages of brilliant color and more muted tones. From lesser hands, paintings veer wildly between either screaming, oversaturated hues or dishwater-dull tones. But in the hands of an artist, every modulation and nuance imaginable is skillfully played off the others. Sargent was a master of the brilliant color notes, but also the most sumptuous grays and off-whites you'll likely ever see. Knowledge of the actual components of his palette, though interesting and worthwhile, won't make us Sargent.

The palette either assists or it thwarts, but it has no implied value in and of itself. And the choice of its components says nothing about the artist one way or the other. What matters is the result.

Peace--TE