Living in a Painting

Month # 5, Work, Work, Work

How to know when good is good enough, when improvement is complete? How to step away?

This painting has been my constant companion--I've been working on it almost daily for the past 5 months. It is a self manufactured problem needing to be solved--but solved in a way which compels others to be swept along into my peculiar reality. How to entice and excite interest: this, for me, really is a fun puzzle. Maintain a certain mystery, include plenty of candy indulgences (centers of eye pleasing pleasure) but it has to feel genuine. Balance the colors so that they almost, but not quite, shock the viewer. Activate all the potential dead areas with stimulation or is a calm transition more helpful? Several times this past month I was convinced I was finished. Some days I would stare and stare hoping to be convinced that it could not get any better but always I was wrong. So I tweaked and refined, painting elements in, painting them out. Stare and stare, until I got to the point that I believed that even if it could get better, it shouldn't. And so it is finished. And the next painting will be better for the experience of this painting because my life and work is one great long line of learning.