A few impressions...

I began to make something tolerable of my African journey only when I had forgotten the trivial details and remembered nothing but the striking and poetic side of the subject. Up to that time, I had been haunted by this passion for accuracy that most people mistake for truth.

Eugene Delacroix

Delacroix is lately known as the father of impressionism, due to some loosy-goosy brushstrokes he once used to portray water droplets. Yet his work carries the weight of legibility and realism for today's students that would have dismayed the Realist, Gustave Courbet, his contemporary.

I can't tell you how deeply words pierced my creative soul when casual observers would tell me that a picture did not look 'right'. They meant 'correct'. Mathematical correctness in an image is now possible with video recorders, and digital cameras will be in everyone's stocking eventually. Yet I know my pictures looked 'right' because whenever I have drawn from my head, they have looked right. When I draw from life, the pictures have an accuracy clear enough for a forensics team, but they aren't always 'right'. Noses and derrieres, for some reason, attract the most attention from viewers who need accuracy. And let's not even talk about flattery!

Cameras now are so ubiquitous that children regularly take their pictures the way I never dreamed of doing at their age. I no longer hear someone say: "Do I really look like that?" Of course they know what they look like. Mirrors will no longer be necessary. I have seen people use their own camera phones to check their own hair.

(Let's put the 'imp' into impression!)