parclose

Sporadically, as I paint I find myself with a group of a few, or maybe even a pile of what I call unfinished work -or what the paintings call not done.   So I put these aside for a while.

And later on...and that can be and usually is years later, I will look through them and see if any of them have changed their mind.  And this doesn't happen often at all.  In fact I can remember only two or three in my life that I've gone through this. 

The last time was back in 2007...I looked through the big pile of set aside pieces and found four that made me think of an old Huxley quote that went something like this: "...the diaphanous prisms of light behind the near familiar object."  I have no real idea of what that means, but those four looked at me with eager friendly eyes.  And I pulled them out and made four wonderful pieces from them.

I was very happy.  And now, I once again hope to go through this process and find a couple that will be willing to work with me again.   I know some artist friends who say oh yea I go through that all the time and I tear off the part that works... -but I don't do that very much at all.  I'm asking the whole piece, will you talk with me?

I want us both to be happy, as it makes me sad to have them sit there, unfinished, almost unwanted, while I know that each has some unique story it wishes to sing to us. Let's remove the parclose and face one another.

With English literature, if you do a bit of shonky spelling no one dies, but if you're half-way through a maths calculation and you stick in an extra zero, everything just crashes into the ravine.  -Mark Haddon