In 1976 I read an article in Artforum Magazine Is Painting Dead? 
Young and impressionable I assumed it was true- Artforum said so.  I continued to paint anyway but always wondered why. 
    My academic background at UCSD made me a little different than many contemporary realists. I studied with Eleanor Antin, and along with two other painters, helped with the props for her 1977 performance Florence Nightengale at the Whitney. She was a great mentor and encouraged me to keep painting.  I studied Criticism and Aesthetics with David Antin and Art History with John Clark, who was visiting from Yale that year.  Both encouraged me to keep painting.  (I thought to my self, do they realize that painting is dead?) But I kept painting.
     Susan recently loaned me Barbara Novaks Voyages of the Self.  In it there was a chapter about William James and Winslow Homer. She described Homer as an American Pragmatist - he painted what he saw.
I think that plein air painting today subscribes to that - paint what you see.  I wondered, am I an Pragmatist?  The idea appeals to me. Art as experience...ts kind of minimal and it justifies the act of painting .
I have done quite a bit of plein air painting. I would have to admit though, that I am not a pragmatist- I need more..  My academic background compels me to paint about ideas also.  I have constantly struggled to integrate the two. 

When we reach for the sublime we take on more than we can grasp, yet merely experiencing the world leaves us hungry longing for something more.