This book is the first to understand a painter's style as an expression of a style of perceiving. Machotka establishes that the way a painter sees the world and thinks about it sets up the range of styles within which he can choose to work. Of course, a painter also works within his historical setting, and Machotka sets the two lives in the context of the revolution in landscape painting launched by the Society of Six in the 1920s and the Bay Area Figurative painting in the 1950s. While doing this, he also presents a biography of each artist which is as sympathetic as it is closely observed.