What can we learn about the idealism of french academic painters?

        I know some of you out there enjoy the excitement of a Pollock over the victorian ideals, and it may surprise you that I have studied more De Kooning  than David.  When I was a teenager, I was actually fascinated by artists who cared more about the idea behind the painting than the actual painting.  Go ahead and check out my deviant art from way back when.  It's worth a good laugh now as I look back, but what I was learning  was that a painting has to be something more than what I get from reality.  Trying to capture challenging concepts like senses  are what still intrigue me.  Now it is more about the subtle expression of a gaze, but it will always be about telling a story.
          So why did I make the transition to more academic work?  The answer is that a form of academic idealism mastered by the french academics challenged my skill level as well as my intellectual level.  To paint a scene imagined from sketch to finished product and to have it transcend anything possible on this earth is what drew me to artists like Caravaggio all the way through Pollock and Rothko.  To paint the idea, means more to me than anything else.  Getting a perfect vision inside the artist's mind should be the point of art.  And I think nowadays many artists get caught up on the technique.  You could spend many life-times focusing on technique.  But if you are trying to translate a vision, a story, a memory, or anything then technique is subservient to that. 

Don't be seduced by a beautiful line.  Don't limit your imagination by what is here on earth.
 

        I've been really siked recently about finishing commissions, doing mural work at Anne Harris Studio in NYC and working on my own pieces.  I enjoy doing commissions and mural work, but what I enjoy most is that this is all practice towards bettering myself as an artist.  
         I don't believe in wasted effort at this point.  Even the worst paintings I have made have furthered my progress.