A Thing Is Complete When You Can Let It Be

Determining when to stop and call a painting complete is not as easy as it seems. To me, a bit of incompleteness allows a glimpse into the painter’s process. Overworking is the kiss of death, particularly with my type of painting where the subtle shifts in color can easily and quickly be lost to too much paint. Also, most of my paintings are suggestive and evocative of landscape, meaning I purposely try to minimize detail and leave things unarticulated. Knowing when a painting is finished is when I can just let it be and when I sense that my intent is visually and emotionally spoken. Unfortunately, my camera is not able to capture the layers of glazing and subtle shifts of color so you don’t see what I do in the studio. There are earthy reds, cobalt violets, greens, pinks and my signature asphaltum (yes, a great tar color!). There is just the suggestion of landscape growth on the horizon. The foreground has some fabulous textural affects. It speaks to me of the Vast Unsayable. I’ll post the professionally taken photographs of this and two other ‘completed’ paintings soon.

#abstractlandscape #cloudscape #paintingandpoetry