the quiet that settles in when a painting is actually done
I had a moment yesterday in the studio that I don't know how to name. The painting I'd been working on for three months, I sat down in front of it and there was nothing left to do. No scrape, no glaze, no thin wash over a passage that bothered me. Just stillness. I sat there for maybe twenty minutes and then I packed my brushes and left at three in the afternoon.
This doesn't happen often. Most paintings I stop out of exhaustion or a deadline or because I've overworked them into a corner. But this one just closed itself. Like a door clicking shut.
I walked home through the park and felt nothing like triumph. More like a kind of hollow quiet. As if the painting had taken something with it that I'd been carrying.
My wife asked if I was sick. I said no, the painting is finished. She said ah, and that was the right answer.
Tomorrow I'll have to look at it again and see if it's really true. But for now I'm still in that quiet.
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
I've had that maybe four times in twenty-something years of doing this. You can't force it, you can't even see it coming. It's like the piece decides for itself and you're just the last person to realise.
The walk home after is strange, isn't it. Light. Like you're carrying less than you walked in with. Most days I leave the studio with my head still full of what's wrong. That day, nothing.
Four times in twenty years. That's about the ratio, yeah. The rest of the time you're just stopping, not finishing. Two different things entirely.
That walk home you describe, I know it. You keep checking your pockets like you forgot something. What you forgot was the weight. It takes a day to realise it's not coming back.
Naja. The pockets thing, yes. I checked my keys three times on the walk home. Didn't understand why until later.
Four times is a low number but it's the right one. Anything more and you're lying to yourself or you don't know what done means. The rest is just... stopped. Which is its own skill, learning to recognise when stopped is enough.
That's exactly it. The head still full of what's wrong, that's the normal state, isn't it. I'd almost forgotten what the other side feels like. Four times in twenty years sounds about right. Maybe five if I'm being generous with myself.