We had a long conversation, this painting and I.
I thought we should go in one direction. I started off confident that This Would Happen.
Painting, not so much.
Fine. I set it aside, move across country, forget about it.
Come across it again this winter and have a New Idea, lay down more paint, confident that This Really Would Happen.
You know where this is going by now.
Set it aside again, so we can both cool off.
Pick it up a third time, but now I'm ready to listen. To consider other possibilities. To let the painting unfold rather than execute. This is not a landscape, or a still life that represents.
It's a portrait of where I am right now in creating, of this back and forth "we" are having. Some guiding, some coaxing, but mostly just finding the way.
And when I stop pushing, it explodes forward.
