Do painters really have that much mental activity when painting?

It can be said that most people who engage in art have a prominent feature, that is, they are rich in thoughts, emotions and imagination. They will tell their thoughts, emotions and imagination in their own works, thus infecting, moving, inspiring and influencing people who appreciate art, such as literature, photography, music and dance. Painting is no exception.

For example, Cao Xueqin's A Dream of Red Mansions is a million words, which contains rich thoughts and emotions, so that countless dream lovers have written numerous specious articles to study, analyze, speculate and even fabricate. Who can tell the true thoughts of the author Cao Gong?

Literature has the language of literature, music has the language of music, photography has the language of photography and painting has the language of painting. The language of painting is modeling and color. That's what "there is something in the picture" means.

When a painter paints, he will consciously express his thoughts and feelings in his paintings, especially excellent or abstract paintings, which are mostly rich in connotation and details, and have entrusted the painter with a lot of thoughts and feelings. In fact, the painter's ideological activities in painting are often more abundant than what he expresses and shows in his works. Many times, the painting has been completed, but the painter still feels "unfinished" and "unfinished". Therefore, it is true that "painters have so many ideological activities when painting".

Take van Gogh as an example. As we all know, Van Gogh is a master of post-impression oil painting. An outstanding feature of impression oil painting is to express the painter's subjective feelings through strong brushstrokes and colors. Starry Sky is Van Gogh's masterpiece. In this painting, the painter depicts the majestic momentum of the blue starry sky, and the towering and graceful posture of a cypress tree under the starry sky, giving people infinite reverie like a starry sky.

Different readers may have different feelings and different degrees of understanding about the significance of this painting. But it is conceivable that when Van Gogh painted this painting, he must have thought a lot. At that time, his thoughts were very active, his emotions were particularly exciting, and his emotions were quite rich.