During the Sky Arts competition, which, believe it or not, was five, nearly six years ago, . During the competition, I had to learn to finish paintings. Before then, I would struggle to finish things and often make a strong start but struggle to keep the momentum going, let alone finish a painting. As you can imagine, having to start and complete a landscape painting within 4 hours, this had to change and becoming a completer/finisher was one of many things I developed during that amazing time. However, as with the strengths we all have, it needs to be kept in balance and in recent years, my completer/finisher has become way too dominant, causing me a lot of problems. I have found my energy for painting, running way too low of late and have needed to figure out what is going on. I reflected that I would arrive in my studio, with huge amounts of determination to reduce the amounts of half finished work that always lines my walls. I usually have at least 20 large paintings, in various stages, stacked against all the walls. There is little rhyme or reason and in frustration, I declare to myself “Right, I need to finish most of these and move on”. My energy is then focussed on finishing and completing, rather than spent working deeply on smaller body of work.
Please don’t get me wrong, in many ways I know I am productive and thankfully nothing leaves the studio unless I am 100% happy with it, but I really need to work differently. The drive to complete what’s been started, has overtaken the conscious, congruent, deep exploration of a topic or idea. I start that way and then find myself switching to “finishing a painting” mode, leaving me unfulfilled and my plans in disarray. I then start working on a new idea, in an attempt to gain some energy! What am I like!
I would love to hear any suggestions you have that might help me shift to a different place. My current ideas are 1) light a bonfire and “reduce” the number of things that distract me with their screams to be finished, 2) restrict myself to drawing for the rest of the year and only make small studies in paint 3) start a postgraduate course in something completely unrelated (that called self-sabotage and an absolute last resort haha).
With love from my wonderful, ridiculous self, Jen 🙂