"The painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself"

Friedrich urges the painter to join observation to introspection. The external scene is a starting point, not a destination; the true work begins when the visible world is filtered through memory, emotion, belief, and desire. Nature supplies forms, light, and atmosphere, but meaning arises from the encounter between those outer facts and the artist’s inner weather. Copying is insufficient because the world as it appears never fully contains the world as it is experienced.

What lives “inside” is not mere whim. It includes a history of sensations and stories, wounds and hopes, cultural symbols and private associations. When that reservoir informs the act of looking, the landscape becomes more than terrain: a storm becomes anxiety, a clearing becomes grace, a horizon becomes an intimation of the infinite. The painter’s task is to give form to this layered resonance without abandoning fidelity to the motif. Accuracy matters, but expressiveness matters more; the goal is not a mirror but a translation.

Such translation occurs through choices of composition, color, and emphasis. A low figure against vast sky can express humility; a path that bends out of sight can suggest fate. Cool distance might evoke solitude; a saturated twilight might carry devotion. Even omissions speak: emptiness can be eloquent. By bending fact toward felt truth, the painter reveals reality’s subjective depth.

There is an ethical dimension here: to see inwardly is to take responsibility for meaning rather than outsourcing it to convention. It resists the complacency of spectacle and the seduction of technical display. In an image-saturated age, the directive feels contemporary: let perception be deepened by conscience, imagination, and wonder. When the canvas holds both the outer light and the inner gaze, the result invites viewers into their own interiors, turning mere depiction into shared experience.