"Kline frequently spoke of a painting as a 'situation', and of the first strokes of paint on canvas as 'the beginning of the situation'. When painting, he said, he tried to rid his mind of everything else and 'attack it completely from that situation'. The real criterion was the feeling a given work conveyed: 'The final test of a painting, theirs [that of artists he admired, such as w:Daumier, mine, or any other, is: does the painter's emotion come across?'"