the place [Dogtown, in Gloucester, Massachusetts] is forsaken and majestically lovely as if nature had at last formed one spot where she can live for herself alone.. ..[it] looked like a cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge – essentially druidic in it appearance, it gives the feeling that an ancient race might turn up at any moment and renew an ageless rite there.

I have made the complete return [from imagination] to nature, and nature is, as we all know, primarily an intellectual idea. I am satisfied that painting also is like nature, an intellectual idea, and that the laws of nature as presented to the mind through the eye and the eye is the painter's first and last vehicle are the means of transport to the real mode of thought: the only legitimate source of aesthetic experience for the intelligent painter.