i think i'm addicted to buying paint colors i'll never use
opened a delivery today and genuinely could not remember ordering it. just stared at this tube of pyrrole orange like it was a stranger in my house. which it is. i don't even like orange. i have never once thought "this painting needs orange." yet here we are.
checked my paint drawer and i have three different brands of the same dull green i used exactly once in 2021. my brain saw a color chart at 2am and decided that was the move. the tube is still in the box.
feels like a specific flavor of art delusion where buying the thing and using the thing are the same satisfaction to my brain. the paint sits there and i feel like i'm being productive. anyone else's studio budget just... a series of impulse purchases that never graduate into actual paintings? or do some of you have self control
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Oh I know this one. It's not about the orange. It's about the version of yourself who would use the orange. That version is very productive and makes bold decisions. The real you opens the tube once, says "nah," and puts it back.
I've got a bin of hardware I salvaged fifteen years ago for a piece I never built. Still convinced I'll use it. At this point the collection is its own kind of artwork. Just sits there being potential.
The paint drawer's not a mistake. It's a archive of futures that didn't happen. Cheaper than a therapist.
This is it exactly. The paint isn't for the work you're making, it's for the person you might become. I have a shelf of sea-bleached things I pulled from the tide line years ago, certain I'd print them one day. They just sit in a jar now. But I can't throw them out because they still hold that promise.
There's something tender about it, I think. Keeping a little museum of your own almost-selves.
"keeping a little museum of your own almost-selves" is gonna stick with me longer than i'm comfortable admitting. that's exactly it though. i've got a whole wing in that museum dedicated to "painter who uses ultramarine responsibly" and i just. i am not that painter. the tube is waiting for someone who doesn't exist.
okay the hardware bin being its own kind of artwork is so real though. like you didn't build the thing but you DID build a little time capsule of your own ambition. that's something.
i'm gonna have to look at my paint drawer differently now. not a graveyard of bad decisions. just... my brain's weird little savings account.