I’ve been working on about 8 things at the same time, which is really not very satisfying. It seems to take forever to finish anything, not least because every canvas I touch lately seems to go through about 6 incarnations before it approaches completion. It’s as if they’re going through some maddening Buddhist cycle of rebirth, dying an ignominious death over and over, while I have to remind myself not to get attached. 

Above, for example, is a stalled portrait that is now being swallowed up by abstraction. I felt awfully guilty about this at first, as if I was wronging the model somehow by painting over her. Then I decided I was nothing if not lord and master of my own domain, and I was not going to allow myself to feel guilty about a failed painting festering in the corner of the studio. Now she’s being eaten by these little blades of colour and I’m a lot more optimistic about the direction the work is going. Still not enlightened, but maybe a step closer. 

Oil on linen (detail).