There were eight paintings that weren't quite there yet sitting in the studio the night before I had to return the key and give up the space.
There's a weird feeling weighted in paintings that I make that I'm not yet happy with.
I've had some of these canvases for years. I've painted over them time and time again, but I never found something in them that I was entirely satisfied with. It's like I know there's potential there. That it's almost somewhere. But it's just not there yet. So I hide them behind finished pieces with plans of possibly maybe painting over them one day. Someday.
But then it was the night before I had to take everything home. I had to pack away these unfinished, somewhat disappointing paintings into my car and carry them around with me. So I laid them all out and sat on the grimy studio floor and decided to try something completely different.
I used my metal rib from that one ceramics class as a palette knife and took out that tube of bright orange paint that I barely touched from the first college painting class I took and it happened.
Something happened and it clicked. They all came together. All eight of them. After a few months of not feeling really happy with anything I was making. It was like after all the pressure of expectations was released, when it was now or not for awhile, I got myself to just paint and to enjoy it. To enjoy the process of watching the colors as they change and blend together and compliment each other. I got to remember what got me to start playing this game to begin with.
I realized midway through painting that the scarf I bought in Paris a few months back that I've worn almost everyday since was making an appearance in my color palette. Colors that I never really thought much about were suddenly colors that made so much sense to me.
I never thought I'd love bright orange until I noticed how much the color sings when it gets to hang around reds and yellows and blues and greens and purples. Which I'm just now realizing is pretty much the entire rainbow.
It was a somewhat odd night where things seemed to be coming full circle and somehow finally fell into place.
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