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I am so sorry, Linda and Carlos, for not replying initially to your posts - I must have been half asleep having just returned from a rather busy weekend away! (I thought I had already replied. Oh dear!)
Anyway, thank-you Linda for your encouragement and your appreciation. I often feel so dissatisfied at the end of a painting - as though I have been working towards a final triumphant conclusion, but it is always blocked by how I finish the piece. So I often, these days, leave the painting unfinished to a degree because by doing that it retains its feeling of possibility, of potential, and even though I dislike leaving a work unfinished, I dislike it less than the dull way I tend to finish it when I do try to finish it. So your comments are really supportive when I feel so anxious about my painting decisions.
Carlos, thank-you also for your comments. This is an earlier painting, from around the end of last year, or the beginning of this year (can't quite remember). I wasn't deliberately changing direction - just following what was going right. It is something I did from a photograph. When I work from a photograph things do tend to go in a different direction. Working from photos is not necessarily a completely bad thing. There is an art to working from photos (which I haven't totally mastered) where your focus should be on the painting so that you are really creating something from your imagination with the photograph as merely a reference. When you are being a slave to a photo that is when it is killing! Degas was a great master at working from photos, wasn't he?
Sharon, thanks very much, as usual. I very, very often have your ideas and excitement in my mind when I am painting, as you know. This was earlier than you had started really talking about colour and Japanese prints, but I look at from a different angle at this later date after hearing your ideas. I am re-inspired by your fresh ideas. It is a good thing, I am finding, that if I am stuck and beginning to despise my current work to actually out it away and look at it again with new ideas. This is obvious, I know, but I am a very slow learner!
Alex! As usual you are much too kind! I did appreciate your comments during its progress, and they helped very much. You make me want to paint, paint, paint!
Enzie, thank-you for your encouragement. The exhibition was relatively successful in that I sold one drawing, but that's better than last year, anyway.
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