Finally threw out the jar of cold wax I've been hoarding since 2019
Not a big thing and I know how it sounds. But there is a jar in the corner of the studio, half full, from a batch I bought before the pandemic, and I have moved it from shelf to shelf through two rehangings and one flood. Never opened it in years. Kept it because of some vague idea that I might need it, as if cold wax goes out of production.
Today I scraped it into the bin. The studio smells different now, which is strange, because the jar was closed the whole time.
What is actually a win: I had a bad week with the big grey one, the one that has been fighting me since March, and clearing that corner somehow made it easier to see what was wrong with the painting. It was too polite. Everything in it was in agreement. I took a palette knife to the left third and it is worse now and better. Naja. That is the work.
My wife says I keep everything. She is not wrong, but she keeps the receipts, so.
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The studio smelling different after is the part that stays with me. A closed jar, and still it was in the room somehow. I have a shelf of things like that, dried out gelatin, a tin of something I am afraid to open, and I know the small ceremony of finally letting one go. It is not small at all.
And good on you for clearing the space before going back to the big grey one. Sometimes the room has to breathe before the work will.
The tin you're afraid to open. I have exactly one of those and I've decided it stays. Some things earn their place by being a warning.
But yes, the room breathing. I don't fully believe it as a theory and yet I cleared the corner and the grey one stopped shouting at me for two days straight. Could be coincidence. I'll take it either way.