How I know When a Painting is Finished: Changing Your Mind is Ok!

'The Black Road,' acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60 cm, 2019

For this post I'd like to write about re-assessing paintings, whether they are recent or older works.

I frequently change my view on a painting, regarding whether it's finished or not, either a few days after working on it or sometimes months or years later. 

The painting above was, I thought, not finished and when I wrote about it a few posts back I said I would work on it more. At this point in time I'm seeing it as finished though as artists we can always change our minds and sometimes it's impossible to resist the call to work on something further! I've destroyed several paintings through this call, though there's no need to panic because they simply become something else.

'Sun Fan and Coast,' acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60, 2019

The more I paint the more I let time elapse before committing myself to the idea of 'finish' and for this reason I often work in series. There may be one element which I may not like which later I can find a way to integrate, or some elements which need painting over. Sometimes though, a painting is finished according to its own terms and a better idea is to start another or several others. This nearly always allows me to see if I truly need to continue or if I have merely become bogged down in irelevancies. Another example of a painting I was going to work over is 'Sun Fan and Coast,' inspired by a recent visit to Cyprus.

I'm realising more and more that if re-working a painting will change it in to something completely different, or adding things will over-complicate it or disrupt the composition, it may be better to put it aside and start something else. The reason I now feel this painting is complete is because I feel comfortable with the composition and message.

Here is another painting I looked out recently to repaint, as I sorted through work from a few years ago, but then I decided it is ok; it works within its own terms and also I have lost 'contact' with it. I can not see any particular element I want to change. One of the reasons I have posted it is because seeing a thicker application of oil paint, with textures worked in to the paint, has given me inspiration for my current work. Painting is like a spiral of ideas back and forth, up and down, everything feeding into everything else.

'My Somewhere Else,' oil on board, 45 x 35 cm, 2016

Over the years I have learned to feel more able to let a painting stand still until I feel connected enough to it to allow further work, or a totality appears to my eyes that suddenly feels complete. It certainly needs a lot of looking at work; quiet moments to just sit and try to see what is happening.

The magic of creativity in painting is that you may not see things the same way from day to day. I'm working on a large watercolour and today when I looked at it some elements jumped out at me in a way they had not appeared when I last viewed it - and these elements now seem complete - while others, which I thought were resolved now appear in need of either more emphasis or to be taken out completely. 

Finally, here is one I am still working on. I find the hardest part of painting is the last stages when your moves, like a chess game, become narrower - unless you decide to totally work over the image and start again. This painting was inspired by the realisation that this year I was finding it hard to 'let go' of winter for many reasons. Somehow the colours of winter and the dark days felt cosy and safe, with skeletal branches transformed to bright colours by sunlight, marvellous soft tones, sudden shadows drifting across blocks of trees and fields. I thought about winter as an image in which a figure is shedding a winter coat at the first signs of Spring. This one has been waiting for 2 weeks now because I want to think really carefully before my next moves.

'She Threw Off her Winter Coat and Headed Towards Spring,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 2019