I have a sense that a painting can be worked on endlessly. Every composition found on the canvas can become a starting point for creating another. And another, and another…
Often, many structures and compositions are very compelling – they could be preserved as “finished” paintings. And surely they could “please the eye” of others, and I would have a much larger collection.
Yet I am driven by some inner compulsion to keep searching, whenever I sense that something is not quite right with the direction. Following this “compulsion” is like a double-edged sword – it does not always lead to a better result. I regret losing something that has value, and yet, by continuing the search, I most often end up ruining the paintings in an irreversible way.
I often ask myself – what determines the decision to stop and consider a painting finished? Or what drives the urge to continue searching, at the cost of losing what has already been developed?
If we assume that this is guided by some inner compass pointing the direction of thinking about the painting, then perhaps a good painting in itself is not the ultimate goal. The goal is a good painting, but one created based on a conviction that it is moving in a direction that resonates most deeply with my “inner spaces.” At the same time, I must note that these spaces are very difficult to define and describe – they are ephemeral, and often, to some extent, shape-shifting.
Perhaps I fear that creating paintings which are objectively good, yet misaligned with the envisioned direction, may alter that direction itself, causing me to lose the original vision or intuition.
And although the domain of painting may be a continuous search for new form, the method of arriving at that form, in my case, must stem from an uncompromising rejection of everything that does not resonate exactly as it should, and that diverges from the – deeply intuitive – conviction that the direction is right…
