One of the great things about being an artist is being able to be challenged. Whether it is creating a brand new piece of art (from NO reference material), or producing a commission for a client, OR re-working an older piece that (after careful thought and thinking WTF was I thinking when I did this!?!) just wasn’t “hitting the mark”.
So, I have a lot of artwork in my studio that sits around waiting for “forever homes” or to be placed in the next exhibit that just stare at me all day long. As I’m tooling around in my studio, I constant see them and think “you need a make over!”. So now I’m taking a short break from creating new pieces and re-doing some these paintings. I started with a painting I did in 2016 titled “A View from the Terrace” which was a short-lived floral series I was creating at the time. It was a nice painting but really needed some more depth and color in it.

OLD “A View from the Terrace” vs the NEW version

I’ve learned so much in the last few years about painting and how to produce works that are more sophisticated (yet playful and intriguing), that making breathing new life into some of my older paintings is not such a bad thing. My favorite story regarding another famous artist that used to do this is from Richard Diebenkorn. He had a painting that sat in his dining room for many years and he often would look at it as there was something about the painting that bothered him but he just couldn’t figure out what it was. And then, after 15 years of struggle, he got up in the middle of dinner, went to his studio, and came back with a paint brush dabbed with paint and made one stroke across the surface. He stood and looked at it while his family was in amazement and declared “NOW it is finished!” That’s the struggle of being a creative… we’re never really quite sure in the beginning if a work is truly finished!

Hope this resonates and have a CREATIVE day!

Re-do, Re-do, Re-do... RE-DONE!