BOAT BUILDERS SKETCH AND PAINTING Here you can see both the drawing and painting. You can see that Homer refined the mother-child image, by modifying the silhouette of the rocks, which is a distortion of reality. That distortion provides evidence that establishes his intention. Homer was striving for Allston's ideal goal for the artist, to achieve a correspondence between the Natural and the ideal, but in this case, with the drawing, we can see that Nature has been compromised. Like Vedder's moon, but still much less noticeable, the finished product is something less than Allston's ideal definition of perfection in art. What the thing is, the rock itself, looks more like a mother and child silhouette in the painting than in the sketch. This was painted in 1873. Over the years, Homer continued to perfect the infusion of such images into his work, such that now, more than one hundred years after his death, he is still regarded as a realist. Today, it is still rare to find evidence even suggesting that his expression of such private personal perceptions have been perceived and recognized.

I refer to man's power of conceiving of more Perfect Beauty than exists within the limits of actual experience. Philosophers denote this power by the word Imagination. The term to many suggests a faculty, that exaggerates or distorts reality, that feeds on dreams, and wastes itself on impracticable visions. Were these the true workings of the Imagination, instead of its excesses, I should still think them indications of a being who has a sublime destiny to fulfil. The reveries of youth, in which so much energy is wasted, are the yearnings of a Spirit made for what it has not found but must forever seek as an Ideal. It is not the proper use of the Imagination, however, to lose itself in dreams. This power, when acting, as it always should act, in unison with the Moral Principle, is a Divine Witness to the Spiritual End of human nature. Imagination passes beyond the transient and the bounded. It delights to bring together, and to blend in just proportion, whatever is lovely in Nature and the Soul. ... Imagination thus exalts and refines whatever it touches. For ever it sees in the visible the type of the Invisible, and in the outward world an image of the Inward, thus bringing them into harmony, and throwing added brightness over both. All things which it looks upon reveal a Being higher than themselves. Perfection! This is the vital air and element in which the Imagination breathes and lives. What a celestial power! What a testimony to the End of our being! Whence comes this tendency in human thought towards the Perfect, if man be not born for a progress which can never end?

1. Sharing what is seen with others.
   When an artist, striving to be Allston's perfect artist, embodies spiritual perceptions in an artwork, attempting to be true to Nature, those spiritual objects are likely to be so subtle that they are missed by people who also miss such perceptions in Nature, which today, includes most everyone.
   
   Solution:
   
   1. This problem can be overcome by creating a visual experience history of similar visual objects. It will be even more effective, if those objects relate to the artist and/or the picture.
   2. Present the area containing the spiritual object removed from the context of the painting as much as posible by only showing that area.
   3. Determine the most effective size and distance for viewing a specific image.
   
   
2. Proving the artist's intention.
   
   Solution: The following items may help to establish that the artist actually saw and then represented the spiritual object.
   1. If a sketch is found, were the Natural physical object is more real in the sketch than in the painting.
   2. If the spiritual object is merely suggested in the sketch, but is more realistically defined in the artwork.
   3. If the spiritual object image is repetitive and is similar to other images existing in the artwork, other artworks by the artist, or somehow associated with the artist.
   4. If a spiritual object is seen where that object provides a reasonable purpose within the artwork.
   5. If a spiritual object is seen where that object then functions to provide an allusion to an idea relevant to the painting.