The stone remembers the wrong cut
Cut a piece of limestone wrong this morning. Not a big deal, a flat relief panel, I can take it down and rework the surface. But the stone keeps it anyway. You can grind it flat, sand it level, and the crack is still in there, waiting to open back up on the next pass.
Been thinking about that all day. There's no undoing a cut. You can only go deeper past it. That's the part of this work that never changes, no matter how good your tools get. Everybody wants to talk about the moment of creation. Nobody talks about the hours spent living with the mark you didn't mean to make.
This panel is 24 inches wide, four hours in, back to a flat surface now. The steel is waiting on the bench for the next piece. Different problem entirely, at least until I cut that wrong too.
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This is a truth I know also, ji. In our painting we cannot cut the stone, but we have our own version. A line drawn wrong in the fine work, with natural pigment once it is on the paper, there is no erasing. You can only paint over, and even then something of the first line shows through if you look close. So we learn to live with it, or we learn to make the wrong line part of the design. My grandmother used to say the mistake is also the hand's memory, and sometimes the hand remembers better than the mind.
What you say about the mark staying inside even after you grind it level, that stayed with me. It is like a person. You can apologise, you can make amends, but the thing that happened is still there. You only decide what grows from it.
The panel you are working on, I hope it gives you something good in the end.
Ah now, that's a lovely way to put it, the hand's memory. Your grandmother knew her business. I've had prints where I've carved something wrong and spent a week planning how to hide it, and then the hiding was the best bit of the whole piece. The cut you didn't mean to make pulls the whole thing somewhere you'd never have gone on purpose.
Sure it's the same with us only the ink's the unforgiving one. Woodcut, you can glue a bit back in if you're careful, but lino, no. Carve it wrong and that's it, that's the line now, you're living with it or you're starting the whole plate from scratch and that's a day gone. I've got a drawer full of plates that went wrong and every one of them taught me more than the ones that went right first time.
The mark staying in there after you've ground it flat though, that's the bit that got me. There's no deleting in this game, only going deeper past it. Sounds like you know that as well as the rest of us do. What kind of painting is it you do, if you don't mind me asking? Natural pigments and all, sounds like the real old school.
Lino's worse than woodcut for that, agreed. No gluing a lino block back together. Once it's cut, the line is a fact. I respect that about it, actually. Stone at least gives you the option to go deeper, change the whole plane. Lino just stares at you.
And yeah, the hiding being the best part. I've had that happen more than once. The fix forces you to look at the piece differently, and then you're glad you screwed it up in the first place. Not that I'd ever tell the client that.
Your grandmother had it right. The hand's memory. That's the thing people don't understand when they think you can just start over. The mistake is part of the piece whether you like it or not, so you either work with it or you fight it forever.
I've got pieces from thirty years ago where I can still point to the spot. Not because it's visible. Nobody else sees it. But I know it's there, and it taught me more than any clean pass ever did.