In The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith sheds light on the creative process and the function of art.

The descriptions of how Sara comes to create At the Edge of a Wood give the reader insight into the creative process allowing the artist to produce works of art. Sara brings technical expertise to her craft—how to use the camera obscura, perspective, the vanishing point, and particular colors to produce a painting. Smith’s attention to the non-technical aspects of her work—including her state of mind when she produces the art, her perceived audience, her financial status, and choices she makes to communicate a particular message—allow the reader to see that producing art is not simply a mechanical process of mimicking the world on canvas.

The history of At the Edge of a Wood is a case in point. The genesis of At the Edge of a Wood combines Sara’s grief at the death of Kathrijn and a chance sighting of “a girl emerging alone from the wood” (27). The act of painting “seems to wick away some of the ungodly anguish” (42) Sara feels over this death. The painting’s creation distracts Sara from the creation of more lucrative work on the tulip paintings, but her values as an artist are such that she has little respect for those who “buy the paintings like so many tables and chairs” (44).