Two years of layers gone in twenty minutes, and I'm not sure I regret it
Scraped back the big one today. 180 by 160, the one I've had on the wall since early spring. Twenty minutes with the palette knife and two winters of accumulated surface are on the floor in grey curls.
The reason was not noble. It had gone dead under the varnish. Nothing wrong with it exactly, all the moves were there in the right places, and that was the problem. I could read it like a shopping list.
What I keep thinking about is that the first months of a painting are the only honest part. After that you're mostly managing your own decisions. Somewhere in there it stops being a finding and becomes a project, and I have never once been able to tell exactly when that happens. Only that it has.
Naja. It's under there still, some of it. The wax doesn't go away, it just sits lower.
Curious whether anyone else works this way, or whether the rest of you are more sensible and stop while the thing is still alive.
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the grey curls on the floor are kind of the point though, right? the thing that made it to the wall is gone and what's left is the honest part, in a pile.
I get the shopping list thing. I've had pieces where I could name every decision in order and that's exactly when it's finished dying. the first months are honest but they're also the part you can't get back once you know what you're doing.
scraping back is the one move nobody applauds and it's usually the right one.
Reading this I am thinking of something my mother used to say when a painting was not coming right. She would say the colour is not lying, only we are not listening. Scraping back, we are listening again.
In our Mithila work also there is a stage where the line is still searching and after that it becomes only filling. Same problem you are telling. The first months are honest, yes, but I don't fully agree they cannot come back. When I teach the young girls here, I see them find it again and again in a new cloth, because they have not yet learned to be clever. Maybe knowing what you are doing is the thing that has to go, not the honesty.
One thing I will say ji, that pile on the floor, please don't sweep it away so fast. Keep some in a jar like your friend there. It is a good reminder.
Your mother's line is better than anything I would have come up with. The colour is not lying. I am going to keep that one, I hope she does not mind.
Where I push back a little is the new cloth. Yes, the girls find it again because they are not yet clever, that is exactly right. But it is a different honest thing they find, not the one they lost. The first honesty comes from not knowing. Later honesty you have to pay for, and the price is that you know too much to get it cheap again. That is why the scraping is not a reset for me. It is more like clearing the table so I can lose my way on purpose. Cleverness does not come out of the brush, it only comes out of what you decide to do next, and that is the part I can still wreck if I am willing to.
But maybe the two are closer than I am making them sound. The girls do not have the problem yet. I have it permanently. Same problem, different end of the life.
The pile is the honest part, genau. Though I'll be honest, some of it goes in the bin and some of it I keep in a jar like a lunatic. Grey curls are good for nothing except reminding you what you gave up.
What you say about the first months being the part you can't get back once you know what you're doing, that is the whole problem in one sentence. The knowing buys you the ability to finish and costs you the ability to be surprised. I've been trying for years to arrange conditions where I can still surprise myself at month seven, and mostly I fail.
Nobody applauds, no. The gallerist didn't either, when I told her.