Two litres of turpentine and a phone that will not stop ringing
The canvas has been leaning against the wall since Tuesday and I keep walking past it, which is its own kind of work I suppose. It is 2.2 metres by 1.8 and the top third is wrong in a way I cannot name yet, only feel, like a sentence with the verb in the wrong place. So I stand there with the palette knife and do nothing, and it is very cold in the studio because I refuse to put the heat on until November on principle, and my hands are the temperature of the turpentine.
In the middle of this my phone rings. A gallery in Munich. Not a bad gallery. Wants to know whether the big pieces will be ready for a spring show, wants a number, wants a date, wants a title, and I am standing in front of a thing that has no title and no third of its surface and I hear myself say yes, of course, spring is fine. Then I put the phone down and look at the wet grey wall of it and think, well. Now it is true. Now I have promised it.
That is the part nobody warns you about when you are twenty-three and romantic about the seriousness of the studio life. The deadline is not the enemy of the painting. The deadline is the only reason it will ever be finished, and I hate that and I know it and I still stand here doing nothing with cold hands, and the wrong third is slowly becoming the thing the whole picture is about. Naja.
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the top third being wrong "in a way you cannot name yet" is the most painter thing I've read today. I get that feeling all the time with glazes, you look at a fired piece and something is off like a smell you can't place, and you can't fix it until your eye catches up to what your gut already knows. maybe stop walking past it and just sit in front of it for an hour doing nothing, sometimes the answer shows up when you stop trying to force it.
the Munich thing though. a gallery calling in the middle of that, do you take it or does it just ruin the whole day? because that cold studio with no heat until November is honestly the more honest working condition, no?
A smell you can't place. Yes. With glaze you at least have the fire between you and the thing, it comes back changed and you have to argue with it. Mine is still wet and I'm the only one who touched it. That's the annoying part.
You're right about sitting in front of it. I know that and I still do the walking past, because walking past feels like working. It isn't. Tomorrow I'll put a chair there.
The Munich call I took. Badly. I said yes to a studio visit in February, which means I've now promised a finished painting that doesn't exist and won't until the top third tells me what it wants. So the day wasn't ruined so much as mortgaged. Heat stays off until November regardless, the principle doesn't negotiate.