the wip (work-in-progress): self criticism/self doubt

it is still on the easel, right outside our front door, on the deck.  the oil paints, brushes, still in place.  it is setting up.  it won't leave me alone, sitting one step beyond my comfort zone.  potential, possibilities.  i think of my artist friend howard kline in Cambria Califonia building and painting/drawing lobster boats endlessly, joyfully, exhuberantly!  hello howard!  these boats don't come easy. 

i'm interested in the underlying structure of this painting.  perhaps that is why i decided to leave it until today.  this morning david said 'don't throw it away.  leave it.'  so, i look again.  i see a small square 'painting-within-a-painting' in the upper left hand corner that has some possibility.  when i see the whole painting based on this design, i think of jaser johns' flag series with a question:  can the rest of the picture plane be organized into 'strips' of the landscape, with an underlying reference to a flag.  the answer is yes.  ok, other options:

scrape the acid green, get further or closer away from the boats.

or i can try to 'kill the painting'.  paintings do not die easily, and i have already made that one step into beyond known boundaries.  pink.  that is what i keep feeling needs to happen.  how to do it without making the painting 'sweet', and how to make the work unto itself and whole.

for now, i will draw.

best,

deb


ps:  i have had many responses with preferences for the varied states of this painting.  the dry state getting a nod twice for like, one for not.  three yes on the way it is.  and i just started to scrape it.  i worry about the panel being poorly constructed.  i have already gouged into the masonite support.