It’s a tricky business this amateurism. Progress consists in putting a non-realistic spin on scenes and objects. Ideally, the subject should be rigorously interrogated, stripped to its essences, warped or scuffed up past anodyne mimesis. Seen, not depicted. Stamped with affect, changed by observation like quarks. Marks are made, goddamn it!

As a viewer of art I’ve admired Chardin, Gauguin, Klee, Kandinsky, Mondrian. Winslow Homer and Maurice Prendergast. The Ash Can painters (Bellows… who are the others?). Jasper Johns. Why does my practice resemble that of a costive fanboy of Frederic Leighton?

Looking back over the fallout of my amateurism, I realize how straitened and dessicated, stodgy and hedging, servile and obdurate, it has been — the dawdling over eyebrows, cheeks and buccal fissures. These aren’t discouraging words to myself, hear me well. They animate me to stumble toward more assertive treatments.

No need to disturb Lord Leighton in his grave. He was of his time and place. (Who isn’t?) I’ve only just met him through an article in The Guardian. Three paintings illustrate the piece.

“Flaming June.” Shown above. This cloying painting induces a visual nausée (only the French word will do). It feels like a contrivance of exotic feathers simulated in meringues and fashioned into a faux corsage for a cake decoration.

“Bay of Cadiz, Moonlight.” The swoonish title of this attractive flourish, which Leighton is said to have “adored,” gives it away. Moonbeams glistening off the swine lagoon of a Carolina pig farm are just as pretty. But to its credit, the painting isn’t flaming.

“Nocturne Blue and Gold— Southampton Water.” Whistler’s watery nocturne feels more serious than Leighton’s. It helps that Whistler never painted the likes of “Flaming June.”

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