This September I had the good fortune to attend American Artist’s Weekend with the Masters in San Diego, where artists of the caliber of Daniel E. Greene, David Leffel, Sherrie McGraw, Juliette Aristides, Quang Ho, Rob Liberace and David Jon Kassan, to name just a handful, maintained that, as artists, we have to pay attention—to look until we see. Looking until you see sounds easy unless you’ve spent a lifetime at it. In fact, David Leffel called painting a “problem-solving discipline”; Daniel E. Greene spoke of the challenge of realism and of the “extremely worthy goal of spending one’s life trying to excel.” Trying to excel is continual, an inner and outer process, a dilemma and a joy.