Every artist knows in his heart that he is saying something to the public. Not only does he want to say it well, but he wants it to be something that has not been said before. He hopes the public will listen and understand what he wants to teach them, and what he wants them to learn from him.

    What visual(视觉的)artists like painters want to teach is easy to make out but difficult to explain,because painters translate their experience into shapes and colours, not words. They seem to feel that a certain selection of shapes and colours, out of countless billions of, is exceptionally interesting for them and worth showing to us. Without their work we should never have noticed these particular Shapes and colours. or have felt the delight which they brought to the artist.

      Most artists take their shapes and colours from the world of nature and from human bodies in motion and at rest; their choices indicate(指示)that these aspects of the world are worth looking at, that they contain beautiful sights. Contemporary(当代的)artists might say that they merely choose subjects that provide an interesting pattern, that there is nothing more in it. Yet even they do not choose entirely without reference to the character of their subjects.

    If one painter chooses to paint a decaying(腐烂)leg and another a lake in moonlight, each of them is directing our attention to a certain aspect of the world. Each painter is telling us something, showing us something, emphasizing something-all of which means that, consciously(有意识地)or unconsciously, he is trying to teach us.

    Green is an important color in nature. It is also the color of most growing plants. Sometimes the word green means young, fresh and growing. Sometimes it describes something that is not yet ripe(成熟的) or finished. For example, a greenhorn is someone who has no experience, who is new to a situation. In the fifteenth century, a greenhorn was a young cow or ox whose horns had not yet developed. A century or so later, a greenhorn was a soldier who had not yet had any experience in battle. By the eighteenth century, a greenhorn had the meaning it has today—a person who is new in a job.

    Someone who has the ability to grow plants well is said to have a green thumb. The expression comes from the early 1900s. A person with a green thumb seems to have a magic touch that makes plants grow quickly and well. You might say that the woman next door has a green thumb if her garden continues to grow long after your plants have died.

    The Green Revolution is the name given some years ago to the development of new kinds of rice and other grains. The new plants produced much larger crops. The Green Revolution was the result of hard work by agricultural scientists who had green thumbs.

    Green is also the color used to describe the powerful emotion, jealousy(嫉妒). The green-eyed monster is not a frightening creature from outer space. It describes the unpleasant feeling a person has when someone has something he wants. A young man may suffer from the green-eyed monster if his girlfriend begins going out with someone else. Or, that green-eyed monster may affect your friend if you get a pay raise and she does not.