Pushing through the boundaries

There's a certain amount of recidivism happening here. I elected to paint over an old painting, but I didn't gesso it first, so the sort of watercolor technique I've been using failed to materialize as envisioned.

And so, as my husband would say, I reduced it to a previously solved problem, shepherding it into the shape of some of last week's work by scraping off some of the paint, flipping it on its side, and adding a little orange and yellow and lot of white to open it up.

I'm not sure it has quite achieved lemonade status, but at least it's not a lemon :)

I did unwrap my last midsize blank canvas yesterday and scribble on it, but when the time came to paint over the scribbles I couldn't bring myself to do it and I couldn't seem to settle on a color.

I'm still struggling with that this morning, so I spent my time instead gessoing over another old canvas. It's surprisingly hard to let go of some of the old ones -- not because I love them (I only paint over the ones I'm not fond of) but because there's always the chance that someone may want them.  I've been surprised by that several times -- people liking and buying work that I didn't really feel particularly proud of -- and sometimes people have asked to buy something I've already painted over. Oops! My bad!

Although -- do I really want art I'm not proud of to be hanging out there? I'm struggling with that a bit now -- there's a virtual exhibit (that was supposed to be physical, but CoVid halted that option) happening in Port Angeles, of abstract art that captures the earth and our concern for it. The curator, who knows my work, asked me to submit some paintings, which I did, and then she saw a couple of my experimental pieces and chose them instead.

So now I find myself in an exhibit, sharing space with two artists whose work I've admired FOR YEARS, and the pieces are nowhere near my best work. So I feel ... I don't know. Embarrassed? Awkward? It's kind of like when you audition for something and are so nervous that you completely blow it: you just want to say, "Hey, ignore that, I'm capable of so much more! I can do better!"

But then the question becomes -- what IS more? What IS better? And isn't that all subjective? Clearly the curator of this exhibit felt those pieces were good enough to include, that they held their own beside the other work. So who am I to complain?

At any rate, once the gesso I just finished dries, I have plans to do yet another something completely different: mostly black, gray and white, lots of mark-making of different sizes... something that is allowed to fail, because the canvas is already old and loaded with texture, and I can just paint over it again. It's amazing how hard it is to paint without caring; to keep adding stuff to a painting when you get attached to what's already on the canvas. That fear, of taking something someone might like and possibly wrecking it by adding a mark that doesn't work and can't be erased... That's a big one for me.

... and not so different from our fears about this pandemic: what if the marks left on us and society by this enforced shutdown and its impact on our economy permanently ruin us and the life we lived and/or loved? At times like this, with thoughts like these, I'm very grateful for my faith. It may not look exactly like yours, or exactly like what I grew up with, but at its heart it holds one truth to be self-evident: that we are loved, that creation is loved, and that all of it is evolving toward good, toward growth, toward a deeper consciousness and compassion. But -- like my paintings -- there may be some dark moments when we can't bear to go forward for fear of what awaits us. And that's the boundary I'm trying to push through.