The painting I nearly painted over
I had a canvas sitting on the easel for six months. A figure study, woman reading by a window, good bones but I'd stalled somewhere in the middle and couldn't look at it anymore. Last week I decided to scrape it and start something else. Mixed up some thinner and started wiping into the still-wet layers.
And then I stopped because there was something in what I was destroying. A passage of light on the arm of the chair, a bit of edge I'd actually gotten right without noticing. So I cleaned what I could, let it dry, and now I'm back in it. Sometimes you have to be ready to kill a painting to see what it actually is.
Anyone else done this, nearly wrecked something before you finally saw it?
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Lord, ain't that the truth. I've done that same thing more times than I can count, set a quilt top aside for months 'cause I lost the thread of it, then one day I pick it back up and see what I couldn't see before. That light you're talking about, that bit that stopped you, that's the Holy Spirit working in your hands, honey. Sometimes you got to step away so you can come back with fresh eyes. I'm glad you didn't scrape it. That piece got something to say yet.
That's a lovely way to put it. I don't know about the Holy Spirit but I do know there's something in the work that knows better than you do, if you can get quiet enough to hear it. A quilt top's the same, you're living with it, even when you're not touching it. The thread comes back when it's ready, not when you are.