Things can change pretty quickly while you’re painting; especially if your modus operandi is basically free falling and hoping for the best. And when you are going with the flow for a few hours at a time, stopping that rhythm to take a picture usually doesn’t (and probably shouldn’t) happen. So there are a lot of process images I simply don’t have; lots of unrecorded stages.

But sometimes I remember to take a picture at the end of the day, and below are 2 paintings that I thought might be cool to see as they evolved to a “finished” piece.

These 2 didn’t change very dramatically over time (I’m saving the drama for a future blog ;) but kept needing adjustments along the way. I just couldn’t get them to work; one had form issues, the other color.

What I find interesting is that toward the end, for me at least, abstract pieces require a lot of thought. After the intuitive, relatively thoughtless first stages, I really have to use my brain to decide what a painting needs – what to keep and what elements must go away. I just sit and look and think, then try something new. Then get frustrated that it wasn’t the magic bullet. And repeat.

The goal is to keep painting until I love it, but that can’t always happen. Still I try damn hard to get there. Sometimes I realize I should have stopped sooner…other times I pull it off the wall –maybe even a year later – and keep going…