Letting Go!

Well, the picture on the left was where I ended last night. The picture on the right is where it stands now. While working on it this afternoon it grew really busy and ugly. I felt stuck then covered it with pastel pink acrylic paint. The pink mixed with black and red gouache, turned the surface a gray/purple. It felt good to make the frustration and efforting disappear. All of the hours spent drawing careful lines, shapes and tinny circles were obliterated in an instant. If you are a painter you know the goodness of this letting go. I wonder if other mediums have a similar way to reset.

I have to be careful to not do this too much. In the past when I did not know how to make a painting better I would destroy it by covering it in a layer of paint. The benifit is the surface becomes very weathered and complex. The drawback is, things get lost and the growth from articulating what is not working and how to fix it does not happen. Or somtimes it is actually a good painting, ahead of comprehension. In this case the brain, cought in an old pardime, can't make sence of it, so it distroys it. That might be what happend here but thats okay because more pictures will be made and it felt good to let it go.

Do I like looking at the new version? Yes. I like that it feels more spacious and less controlled. Is it a keeper? Yes, but more as someting I will likely go over again or cut up or sew into.