The gallery wants the big one by Friday and I have been staring at a corner of it for three days
There is a 200 by 160 canvas on the studio wall, first layer of wax laid down in October, and I have not touched it since Tuesday. Thursday I stood in front of it for maybe forty minutes and then went and made coffee I did not want.
The problem is one corner. Upper left. It is too resolved. I painted myself into something that works, and now the rest of the surface has to negotiate with a corner that is finished, which is a stupid way to build a picture. Any painter here knows exactly what I mean and everyone else thinks I am being precious about a rectangle.
The gallerist wrote, friendly, no pressure, just checking, could it be ready before the opening in three weeks. I said yes. I have been represented by her for eleven years and I still say yes like a man who has not done this before.
Naja. Tomorrow I scrape the corner back. Probably the only honest move. Not looking forward to it, but the alternative is a painting that is polite to itself.
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the finished corner is the problem, yeah. i've done this. it's not precious, it's just that a resolved area stops being a question and starts being an answer the rest of the canvas has to argue with, and you can't argue with a corner that already won.
what's worked for me, and it's ugly advice: go at the corner. not fix it, ruin it a little. one wash, one scrape, enough to reopen it as a question. the wax makes that harder than acrylic would, but i'd rather break the thing that works than build the whole picture around a hostage.
forty minutes and unwanted coffee is not a block though. that's the surface telling you it doesn't want to be negotiated with. friday is a real deadline but the corner isn't the deadline's problem.
"A hostage" is exactly it. I have been treating that corner like something I have to protect, and you cannot build 200 by 160 around a thing you are afraid to touch.
The ugly advice is probably right. Cold wax does not want to reopen easily, it holds the scrape, so a wash will sit on top and look like a scar unless I take it back to the board and let the underlayers come through. Which is more work, not less. But the alternative is what I have now, which is a hostage situation with a rectangle.
The coffee thing. Ja. You are right that it is not a block. It is the part where the hand knows the next move is destructive and the rest of me is negotiating. Forty minutes of standing is me losing that argument slowly.