I see what I want in other people's work -- I get inspired about colors to use, ways to resolve my compositions, and then when I face my own canvas, I absolutely flounder and every mark I make is just a new dilemma.
I hem and haw and dither, making little jabs and swipes, hoping, desperate for a point of entry. Finally, 20 minutes before I have to quit for the day, I attack the piece with giant angry strokes, usually undoing all of the fussy small brushwork I'd just spent the previous three hours creating, and that's the only decent mark I'll make all day. I hate this equation.
It seems like this is not true art-making, this haphazard accumulation of mistakes and corrections, of tentative attempts and premature declarations. I have changed! No, fuck, still the same.
How can I see what I want, imagine what I want, and not be able to create it? What is in the way?
Can't you just picture the God of Artists, bemused, tirelessly triaging: ranters to the left, manifestos to the right; blue-balled by your own ego, here's a sharp kick to the shins.
It's been a season of fumbling, and griping about fumbling. And reluctance to write because of the griping.
Don't I reconcile with myself every time? I make the peace offering, I put down the brass knuckles.
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