Blue wood true wood'.
In our time, painting is a scholastic practice. Happily detached from any material or social utility, painters seem akin to those Byzantine theologians who, it is said, quarrelled about the size of angels as the Turks besieged Constantinople. This is not a reproach, but a great compliment: autarky and self-absorption have given birth to some of the highest achievements of the human spirit: the mandalas of coloured sands, Dr. Sotos Ochando's Dictionary of Universal Language, the interior decorations of contemplative monasteries, the science of heraldry, those frescoes painted by Goya in the Quinta del Sordo, the intimate diaries. The singers of deeds have generally scorned these useless and self-conclusive exploits, carried out (to cap it all!) amidst certain comforts, as if climbing cliffs or crossing seas amidst enormous hardships contributed more to human progress than spending the afternoon drawing by the cooker.