Save It or Trash It?

For every completed painting, I have at least one stashed that doesn’t measure up. They drive me crazy. Something good is in there, but what? And how do I finish without losing the “one good thing” that keeps me from throwing gesso on and starting over?

Writing is not much different. Before publishing Bitch Factor in 1998, I wrote four practice novels that never got past a first rejection. And I still create short story openings that crash and burn.

Not EVERY idea is worth pursuing. And paint is only paint.

But creativity stagnates if we just keep reproducing the single idea that catches fire with our reader/viewers. Remember Margaret Keane’s “Big Eyes”? I loved those paintings when they came out in the sixties. Now there’s a movie, but the idea was so “kitchy” that once it was gone, so was Keane’s recognition as an artist. And Thomas Kincaid, the “painter of light,” he’s great, but how many cabins in the woods do we need?

Then I think of Amadeo Modigliani, his women have long necks, his men have none. Did he long to paint water lilies on a pond? Did Claude Monet long to paint portraits? Yes, we know what the historians wrote about them. What will they write about us?

Monday night, an interior designer asked if I only paint nonobjective abstracts. I hesitated to answer, because it’s been drilled into my brain that we have to “specialize”, we have to impress our public with a “brand.” Pfui!

I love all kinds of paintings, all kinds of stories. Look around my house, however, and you’ll see that I’m not in love with hyper-realism. I prefer stylized paintings. And you won’t see many romance novels. I prefer dark and gritty to light and fluffy. But I like a little fluff with my grit, and I like a little realism with my abstractions.

Okay, I’ve vented. And I still muddle around my studio wondering, Save it or Trash it?

 

Queen for a Day is a watercolor painting waiting to be finished. Yet I’ve painted lots of abstracts and even other watercolors without getting back to this one. I haven’t cut it up to use in a collage, so it might get finished yet.