Monday, January 25, 2016

Drawing/Day 1.25.16 Painting in progress (detail)


Good grief, what a struggle today. Staring, trying things, painting things out, painting things back in, tempted to paint over the whole thing with gesso and starting fresh. But, I remind myself that if I do that I will just get to this point again and have to deal with the same problems of resolving it.

This is a detail of the painting in progress I posted yesterday, the upper left corner (I decided to keep it in its original orientation - for now anyway.) It's the only section of the painting that is even halfway working.

So, at the risk of being accused of foolishness for even putting myself in his company, here is an apt quote for this day of painting from Richard Diebenkorn - "When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling, and I can stop and say 'Gee, how lucky I am to be doing this activity that I like to do!' But it happens very rarely; usually it's agony. If it doesn't come out looking agonized, it's because I have a dread of that appearing in the work. I go to great pains to mask it. But the struggle is there. It's the invisible enemy."

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