Never Beyond Redemption

I haven’t been painting well lately. Nothing I’ve put my hand to feels successful. It’s frustrating beyond polite words. I’ve been here enough times that I know that the only way out is through, and that the way through needs to be playful and without expectation.

I started today looking at a painting I never felt was finished, yet it had been reworked and overworked and felt stilted and stagnant. I also had an unfinished piece I have been experimenting with on rice paper with watercolors. It was not coming along at all as I intended and I nearly balled it up and tossed it in the trash. However, I have zero-waste policy and ususally put something like that in a drawer to use as collage material, paint over, or repurpose in some way.

Since they had a similar color palette, I decided to take these two messes and see if I could combine them to make something with more energy and some interesting texture. I put away the paints and pulled out some different tools and materials because you know what they say about doing the same thing and expecting different results, right?

Here’s how things went:

At the end of the day, well, after about an hour, I finished up with a piece I feel a whole lot better about than either one I started with, so I’m putting this in the WIN column!