Worked on a new painting for 3 or 4 weeks. It had a certain poetry in the figure so even as I ran into problems with my color choices and abstract background shapes it was worth the battle to try and save. I scraped hours of work and bad decisions off the canvas on numerous occasions and worked through it. Finally I came home from work yesterday, had a couple of beers, my son was quiet and satisfied in his room for the moment and the paint on the palette was still usable: I squinted my eyes to see the major shapes and how they were reacting with everything and began applying pigment. Using a far too bright and bland value I attempted to simplify and rectify areas that had become misshapen and complicated. I realized almost immediately that my relaxed boozy techniques were too crass but I painted on with the anger and frustration of someone who works so many hours to pay the mortgage that his muse is effectively tied up and gagged and stuck in a closet five-sevenths of her days. On weekends she is drug out, untied, slapped straight and expected to perform immediately and with the brightness and vitality of an eternal spring morning. Instead, I stand there confounding my mind trying to use technique that is rusty and instincts that have been starved and choked.
I have a new sketch and a vague sense of how to attack it gnawing the back of my mind. In 4 more days I will wake up, feed and stroll back into the painting room, stare down a blank canvas like a prize fighter, looking for weaknesses and a way to win. The muse, unshackled and haggard, will not rub my back or massage my sore legs but she will still entice me, then play hide and seek with my minds eye. Showing me the way then disappearing, leaving me in the lurch; older, unshaven, unsuccessful and trying to expand a minor local notoriety into greatness. Again.
