You've got to love process...If end product is all we have in mind then creating art could become the thing that defeats you completely. I've been working more on the teal canvas that I posted about last time. I tried a technique to help me establish some texture forms that suggest flowers blooming, it worked pretty well, until...I layered in a little more ink colours and lost the original effects I had achieved. I worked with the mess for a time and then knew I just didn't know how to get it back to where my original plans had taken me.
So it's gone and I've brought the canvas back to it's beginning stages and will consider what I'll do with it now.
The process always teaches me something and this time was no different. What I realized is how vulnerable or affected I am by 'voices.' Maybe it's because all of this is so new, it's only been a couple of years since I began painting and my life long habit of valuing other peoples voices/opinions over my own has made itself evident in my art process. You see when I began this piece and had the background done and my little flourishes on it, a voice in my life that I value greatly told me that for them I could stop right there because it was complete for them. It was a wonderful voice meant to encourage, but it put me immediately in conflict with myself, because it was only a start for me and I began to over think it, worry on some underground level that I was going to ruin this 'completed piece' if I continued. So I left it for a very long time but I could never get past feeling it was only the beginning, because for me nothing is sacred when I work on a painting. Unless I stop listening to myself and move into that doubting, critical mind stage and then God help me I'm toast!
I'll not bore you with more of my life lessons through art. Hope you are enjoying the process as you create :-)
