There is a stage in almost every painting when I wonder what on earth I am doing?
It usually happens somewhere in the middle.
The painting has been started. There is enough colour on the canvas that I can no longer pretend I am simply experimenting. Something has begun to emerge, but I can't quite see what it is yet. And then, suddenly, I don't like it.
Sometimes I really don't like it.
I stand back from the canvas and look at it from across the studio. Then I walk closer. I tilt my head one way, then the other. I stare at a particular area for far too long, as though it might explain itself if I just give it another minute.
Usually it doesn't.
This is the part of painting that doesn't make it into the finished artwork.
You see the beginning, when everything feels possible. You see the finished painting, when all those decisions somehow appear inevitable. You don't usually see the strange middle bit where I am standing in front of a canvas wondering whether I've just ruined it.
I've ruined plenty of paintings.
Or at least, I've thought I had.
There have been paintings I've nearly painted over because I loved what was underneath, and I couldn't imagine how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be. Sometimes I scrape something away. Sometimes I cover it completely. Sometimes I leave a tiny bit of the old painting showing through; sometimes by accident, sometimes with intention.
And every once in a while, something happens.
A colour that seemed completely wrong suddenly makes sense beside another colour. A shape that bothered me becomes the thing that gives the painting its energy. A mark I was trying to get rid of becomes the mark I build everything else around.
The painting starts talking back.
(I know that sounds a little strange. But that's genuinely how it can feel!)
I don't mean that I sit around waiting for a painting to tell me what to do. It's more physical than that. I make a mark and respond to it. I put down colour and react to the colour. I cover something and then miss it.
It is a conversation, but I don't always know where the conversation is going.
I've become much more comfortable with that over the years.
Not completely comfortable. I still have those moments when I want the painting to resolve itself immediately. I still have days when I think, well, this one is going nowhere.
But I've learned not to make too many decisions in that moment.
The middle is usually not a good time to decide that a painting is a failure.
It is simply the point where the painting has stopped being an idea in my head and has become something real. And real things are messy.
There is paint on top of paint. There are decisions I regret. There are bits I love and don't want to lose. There are colours that looked wonderful in my imagination and surprisingly terrible on the canvas.
There is uncertainty.
And maybe that is part of why I like abstract painting so much.
I don't have to know exactly what the painting is going to become before I begin. I can discover it as I go.
Sometimes the best thing I can do is keep working.
Sometimes I need to walk away.
Sometimes, I come back the next morning and immediately know what needs to happen. Other times I stare at the painting over coffee and still have absolutely no idea.
Eventually, though, something shifts.
The painting starts to feel like itself.
I don't always know exactly when that happens. There isn't necessarily one dramatic moment when everything falls into place. More often, it is gradual. One mark feels right. Then another. A colour gets quieter. Something gets covered. Another area opens up.
And eventually I stop trying to make the painting become something.
I start seeing what it already is.
I think there is something useful in that beyond painting, too.
We tend to be much kinder to beginnings and endings than we are to middles.
Beginnings are exciting. Endings are satisfying. Middles are where we wonder whether we've made a terrible mistake.
But maybe the middle deserves a little more patience.
Maybe not knowing what something is becoming doesn't mean it isn't becoming anything.
I have to remind myself of that in the studio all the time.
So when I'm standing in front of a painting that looks awkward and unfinished and a little bit wrong, I try not to panic.
I remind myself that I've been here before.
I pick up the brush.
And I keep going.
Click here to learn more about my original abstract artwork Ideas I had in Churchill.