Artist Reply: then...... you should be surprised, like me, that my experienced art teacher assesses the work as one of my best. He likes the warm impressionistic, gesture brush strokes in the foreground in contrast to the cool, sober and massive painted mountains in the background. I was only convinced of the quality, after he had asked me to view the painting from a distance. At my age of 65, I was not happy as a child, but I realized that there is much to learn in judging a work of art