Friday, April 17, 2015

Risky Business


Yesterday, I left the Green River for some old barns.  Painting outdoors and quickly forces risk taking.  If the initial conception and realization is good, then the only problem is when to stop.  If the start is difficult, there's seldom time to recover.  The risk is painting a failed picture.  You trust your first idea and then learn from what follows, to improve those first ideas, and accept the failures as a normal part of the process.  For example, baseball players seem to accept failure as part of their work.  As batters, they will fail seven out of ten times even though they want to get a hit every time up.  It's the three out of ten that makes them who they are, but they can't get the three without the seven.

Yesterday I did four paintings.  They were all of compositions I had conceived the day before to improve my chances.  I'm still pondering the results.  A painting is all about the execution, not the conception.  However, even if the first realization is not successful, it can lead to a second more successful version, which is what I am going to try next.

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