Improvement

Lately, my aim with painting is simply to improve. I look over the body of my work and see nice pictures, some more than others, but I am feeling an intense eagerness to improve, to see pictures that lift me off the ground. Each new piece is a reaching that almost strains me, and with each new piece I am almost immediately resolved to scrap it and start over. In fact, several pieces lately have been wiped clean the next day; they were nice, but not knock-outs.

This is a new development for me, even though I’ve been painting consistently for over 15 years. In the past, it was fine enough for me to get something done and then move on, finding satisfaction easily. I suppose that since I’ve become more aware of the strong force of representational artists working today, there has aroused in me the strongest want I’ve ever felt for experiencing my potential. It is at the same time exciting and burdensome. I click on Facebook or Twitter with a mixture of avidity and trepidation, much like walking into the studio. This want for improvement can be an anxious feeling (that’s why I say burdensome). The final brush stroke is a blissful one, followed quickly with disappointment from too many flaws. This is a time of intensified learning, where it feels that I keep shooting forth strong desires and running pell-mell to catch up with them. I do look forward to the time when I’m only just at the heels of my desires, dancing gracefully more than this maniacal chasing.
In the future, my aim may remain the same, to simply improve, although the aim will have more subtleties. Simply to improve, for now, means to express light and form in such a way that dazzles me. Form expressed through graduating values and light expressed through the varying temperatures of color. This is the exciting stuff, the stuff that is just edible like a big gooey donut. To see it done well, really well, is like nothing else.

A good piece of art actually trains the eye and mind to perceive the world a little differently, and hopefully, better. At any rate, I am improving and I won’t plateau until I am utterly satisfied, for however long that lasts.