Been thinking about painting lately. When is one finished? How do I go about the process of painting? I've been looking for rules and boundaries within which I can work. Then it came to me, the painting provides its own boundaries. I am often looking for the boundaries so I can be comfortable and have some kind of peace in the process of making art. So I wrote this poem... hope it makes you think about your working process.
Just begin a painting
and the next day work on it
and the day after that, work on it some more.
Begin to make shapes, mold the painting
Form it
Go where it wants to go for awhile.
Then make it do your bidding, wrestle with it in the night.
Sit silently and let it speak.
Tell it to shut up and you do the talking for awhile.
And the next day, work on it some more.
Look for patterns and edges and shapes and forms
Let your brush dance upon the peaks and valleys of the canvas.
Finally, it is morning.
The painting has had its say.
You have developed every conceivable area of the field,
To lay in one more stroke would mean you've gone too far.
It is finished.
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