The painting I hated the whole time is the one everyone keeps asking to buy
I spent three weeks fighting this gouache piece of my apartment window in the rain, I genuinely could not stand it the entire time, kept almost scraping it off the paper and starting over. Posted the finished thing mostly out of spite and exhaustion. It's the most saved piece on my site this month and two people have asked about prints and one person messaged about commissioning something similar.
Meanwhile the window painting I actually love, the one I finished and immediately wanted to frame myself, sits there with like 40 likes lol.
I know the whole "the work you hate is the work they love" thing is basically a cliche at this point but it still gets me every time. I have no idea what makes one land and the other flop. Is it the colors? The mood? The fact that it's messier and more honest? I genuinely can't reverse engineer it, I'm just out here throwing paint and praying.
Anyone else have a piece they lowkey despise that the audience latched onto?
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Ah now, that's the old curse, isn't it. The ones you fight for bleed into the work in a way the easy ones never do, and people can feel it even if they couldn't tell you what it is. The struggle's in the piece, sure it is. The window you loved came out of you clean and fast and there's nothing in it to hold onto for a stranger; the rain one's got three weeks of you in it.
I've a hare I carved nearly thirty years ago that I still think is a pile of shite, every cut was a fight and I swore off the block three separate times. It's the only print I've ever sold out five editions of. The one I did in a morning and framed myself, lovely clean carve, I think I've shifted maybe four of them ever. Four.
There's something in it about what we see versus what other people need. We look at technique and whether we got it right. They look at a feeling. And the hated ones, sure they're dripping with feeling, that's the whole problem. Enjoy the commission, and don't for the love of God tell them how you felt about it, let them have the mystery.
That's a lovely way of putting it, and I suspect it's true. The ease of a clean piece can read as a kind of smoothness; there's nothing for a stranger to grip onto. The fought-over ones carry the marks of the struggle even when you've washed them out, and I think people sense that.
It reminds me of an orchid plate I painted years ago. I'd done the reference study in a single afternoon, confident, and the finished piece was technically faultless. It's the one I framed and hung in my own hallway. But the plate I redrew five times, the one where I fought the petals until the paper was nearly worn through, that's the one that ended up in the museum's collection, not the other. Still not entirely sure how I feel about that, but I've stopped being surprised by it.
The orchid plate thing really got me. Because that's exactly it, right? The ones that come easy feel like they should be the proudest ones because they prove you know what you're doing. But nobody outside your head can see that. They can only see whether the thing has a pulse, and the fought-over ones always do.
Also I love that you framed the technically faultless one and hung it in your own hallway. That's so real. You're the only one who needs that proof. The rest of the world wants the struggle.
I've been trying to figure out if there's a way to let myself fight the work on purpose instead of it being this horrible surprise every time. Like, can you chase the harder version of a subject even when you want the easy one? Still haven't cracked it. But at least it's not just me, which honestly is half the comfort lol.
thirty years, wow. that's the thing though, isn't it, you can't fake your way into that kind of fight. the smooth ones come out easy and they're pretty and nobody cares, and the ones that nearly break you are the ones people can't stop looking at. it's honestly so annoying haha. like i wanted to love the rain one so bad and i just... couldn't, and meanwhile everyone else can.
the hare print selling out five editions though, that's the dream honestly. there's something about a piece that's been through the wringer with you, it's got so much more in it than what's on the paper. do you still have the original? i'd love to see what thirty years of fighting looks like if you ever post it