Other people say it’s
good, but you think it’s awful. What do you do with it?
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| Spruces and pines on the Brook Trail, by Carol L. Douglas. This is more or less where my mark-making is today. |
Last week I listened to a fellow artist grumble about her
painting. I really couldn’t see anything wrong with it; it was quite good, and
I told her so. “But it’s not what I set out to do!” she answered. The wind, the
rain, and the changing light had robbed her scene of the vivacity she’d first envisioned.
That causes a funny sort of brain cramp in artists. Our
vision is so deeply overlaid with the pattern of what we want to say that the
gap bothers us. We can’t see the strengths in our work because we’re focused on
what is missing. In this case, my friend couldn’t see her strong composition
and the brooding quality of the painting because she was mourning the light
that had escaped behind clouds. “I can’t even remember what attracted me to
this scene in the first place,” she said sadly.
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| Hedgerow in Paradise is from a time when I was hiding behind fraudulent brushwork. The only thing wrong with it was that it was fundamentally dishonest. |
I was curious about this phenomenon so when I got home I asked
a musician if this ever happens to him. “Oh, all the time,” he laughed. He told
me that he’d just finished composing and recording an album and to him it was
totally rotten, because he hadn’t achieved his goals for the project. Still, he
published it, and then he started something new.
A long time ago, Marilyn Fairman told me that the
longer she painted, the less satisfied she was with her work. I’ve noticed the
same thing. If you’ve never been blindsided by the gap between your inner
vision and the results, I suspect you’re not challenging yourself enough.
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| Spring Allee is another painting from the same period. The marks are better, perhaps because it's a deeply autobiographical painting. |
I struggled for many years with hating my own brushwork. I
visualized long, sinuous lines of paint. Instead, my finish was always short,
abrupt, and energetic. Because of that, I frequently overworked the finish in
an attempt to obliterate my own handwriting. That invariably muddied what had
started as a strong painting.
Finally, I realized this was a kind of self-loathing. It was
akin to always hating yourself in photos (which, I confess, I do). I stopped
fussing and forced myself to leave my brushwork alone.
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| Then I spent a long time in the wilderness. I eventually threw out this painting of Letchworth Gorge because it was so muddy. |
If it were someone else’s, I concluded, I would be fine with
it. I might even love its jumping energy. But it told me something true about
myself that I didn’t understand and found uncomfortable. I felt as if I had to
hide this unexamined truth. That’s ironic, because painting is supposed to be forthright,
and that was the most authentically honest thing about my work.
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| Middle Falls at Letchworth, by Carol L. Douglas. I spent that entire season at Letchworth Gorge and eventually came up with two paintings I thought were credible. It wasn't until much later that I realized I'd finally cracked the problem of paint application. |
What do you do with that dissatisfaction? This is where
wiping out bad paintings is a bad practice. It steals the opportunity to study
what has just happened. I’ve learned to leave those canvases alone, carry them
home, rack them to dry, and then revisit the work at a later date. By then, my
memory of my ambition has faded. I can see the new painting in its own merits.
Often, I’m shocked to realize that I love the ones I once hated, and the ones
that seemed to be easy successes now bore me.
Join me for Sea and Sky at
Schoodic, August 5-10. We’re strictly limited to twelve, but there are
still seats open.
