hung the two I was embarrassed by instead of the good one
Our library does a little community show every spring, nothing juried, you just sign up for a 4 foot panel and hang whatever. I'd been planning to put in the marsh piece I did in October, the one that actually came out the way I wanted.
I hung two others instead. Both were ones I nearly painted over. A small still life of the kids' cereal bowls from last summer that I hated for months because the light is flat and the left bowl is honestly a little lopsided, and a scrappy plein air thing from the parking lot behind the rink in February where I got the cold sky right and the tree wrong.
I don't fully know why. I think I'm tired of only showing the ones that behave. The cereal bowls especially, my 11 year old walked past the table while I was varnishing it and said oh that's the actual morning.
Anyway it's up until the 22nd. I keep catching myself wondering if anyone will say anything about them, which is a stupid way to feel about two paintings I almost threw out. The marsh one can go to the fall fair.
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The lopsided bowl is the good one, and you'll only figure that out in about five years when you can't remember which way round it was meant to lean.
I know the marsh piece. Not yours, but the sort. The one that came out the way you wanted, which is exactly why it's the least interesting thing on the panel. Nothing left in it to look at twice. A printmaker I knew in Kinvara used to pull a proof, hate it, and stick it on the shed wall, and half the ones they sold off the wall in the end were the shed ones.
The February sky that you got right and the tree you got wrong, that's the honest one. Anyone can paint a tree. Cold light over a car park in February is a whole different animal and you caught it.
Good luck with the show, whatever way it goes.
The shed wall thing got me. Half the ones they sold were the ones they'd already given up on, that says a lot.
And you're right about the marsh piece, annoyingly. It's the one I'm proud of and it's also the one I don't need to look at again. The parking lot tree still bugs me and I still walk past it and check. Guess that's the difference.
Five years is a long time to wait on the bowl though. I might cave and fix it before then.