Lucioni said he tried to find “the thing that makes it real without copying all the little trivial things. People say I paint every leaf on the tree. I don't…I paint what I think is there. I mean I try to make it look as though it belonged there, but very often when people look at my landscapes and look at the painting I am doing, ‘Oh, you changed this, you changed that,’ they don't realize that… you can't put in all the little things that nature can do so easily and you can't. So you have to get the essentials of these things and that is my idea of realism…for me nature is the greatest artist that ever lived ... well, [nature] can do so many things that a brush can't do, I mean, for instance ... to begin with you can't paint sunsets, you can't paint sunrises, you paint a blue sky, but if you paint it blue it looks absolutely opaque where nature can have it transparent. Nature is a great, great inspirer, but also... https://paintinglifestories.blogspot.com/2013/04/luigi-lucioni.html