This painting is both and old friend and a mortal enemy and in the 20 years we've been together it's been both a dance and a battle. Love and death but nobody wins. It's just never hit the balance of color,texture and subject that it takes to make a great painting.
Sometime's it's taken a more conventional turn in hopes of selling it so that I can afford to keep working and others's I just fling paint at it until I feel better.
People often wonder why artist's destroy paintings. The answer is simply frustration with themselves, the painting, the art market and the world in general.
If you leave it behind some idiot will come along and spout a lot of twaddle about what they think the artist was thinking or trying to achieve with the piece and then pat themselves on the back about their own discovery and insight like they created something. Why give them the satisfaction? In destroying the painting the artist gets the last word and a tremendous amount of satisfaction as well. It's not cash but it makes us just as happy.
Sometimes it does "feel so good when you quit"
Tonight quitting is not an option...just another part of the journey. Your head is in a different place in the early morning hours, critical thinking is suspended and there's just instinct and reflex...the color and the texture. Sometime's that's the breakthrough we both need.
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