I stopped posting the finished painting. I post the palette instead.
Something I noticed this winter and I'm still not sure what to do with it.
I started photographing my palette at the end of a session, before I clean it. Cadmium orange smeared into raw umber, a ridge of lead white, the whole thing looking like an accident. I put those up because they cost me nothing. Thirty seconds against the north window and voilà.
They get roughly four times the engagement of the finished work. Every time.
The finished painting is the thing I spent three weeks on. The palette is the residue. And people want the residue.
My first reaction was irritation, obviously. But I think I understand it. A finished painting is closed. There is nothing to say about it except "beautiful," and then the conversation is over. A dirty palette is open. People can see the decision in it, they can imagine the hand, they can ask what that green is. It invites them in instead of presenting them with a verdict.
Which is uncomfortable for me, because I was trained to believe the painting is the point and everything else is noise. And commercially, the noise sells. I have had two commissions this year that came directly from palette photos.
I'm not going to stop posting the work. But I've started painting a little bit for the middle of the process, the ugly stage, the part where it looks like a mistake. That seems to be what people actually want to see.
Curious whether this is only my corner of the internet or if it's everywhere.
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I understand the irritation but I don't think it's as strange as it looks. A finished painting is closed. There's nothing left for the viewer to do except decide whether they like it. A palette still has the decisions in it, and people can imagine their way into that.
I work with paper, mostly old book pages and torn edges, and the scraps on the table are usually more interesting than what I glue down. Not more valuable, just more open.
The thing I'd watch is what you do with the numbers. It's easy to start making work that photographs well as a palette instead of work you actually want to make. The residue only stays honest if it's genuinely a byproduct.
The closed thing is the hard thing. Anyone can leave a decision open, that takes nothing. Getting the last inch right so it holds on its own, that's the weeks.
But he's right that a palette keeps the viewer working. I weld and cut stone and I'll tell you the shop floor at 6pm looks like more than the piece does. It isn't. It's just unfinished, and unfinished is easy to look at because your eye still has a job.
So the numbers are telling you people like unfinished. That's not a reason to start leaving things unfinished.
The shop floor at 6pm, yes. That's a better version of my palette, and you're right that it isn't more. It's just not finished arguing with itself, so the eye can step in and finish it. Free work, essentially. The viewer does the closing and feels clever for it.
What I keep chewing on is that the closed thing asks for something harder: patience, and the willingness to just receive. Most people will take the puzzle over the gift. I don't think that's a failure of the audience exactly. It's just what an open image does to a nervous eye.
So no, I'm not going to start leaving them open. But I've stopped being annoyed about it, mostly. The palette is a good drawing exercise. The painting is the point.
"Closed" is the right word and I had not found it. That's exactly the irritation, I think. I spent three weeks closing a thing, and closing it is the work. Then the residue gets the attention because it's still open.
And yes to your last point. That's the trap, and I've been circling it. The morning I catch myself mixing a palette for the photograph I'll stop posting them. For now I'm letting the palette be a byproduct, c'est tout. The day it becomes a product, it's dead.
Your scraps on the table. Do you keep them, or do they just go?