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"Happiness begins when expectation ends."  Buddhist saying

The early middle portion of a painting requires every positive quotation, affirmation and self-help book to see me through.  It's where I have to keep close check on my mental attitude.  It's very easy to start spiraling down into doubt and insecurity and want to give up.  Every. Single. Time.  I don't seem to get through a painting without going through this period.  I have hopes that someday, with many more paintings under my belt, I'll have more faith that every one of them will turn out, but maybe that confidence will always elude me, and this phase will always be a necessary step in the process.

This period occurs after I've played freely for a while, maybe with a slight focus on colors, maybe not.  Lots of layers are building up, and everything is in total flux.  I don't know if this will be a dark painting or a light one, a colorful or a muted one.  I don't know what I care about or want to emphasize.  It should be a time of excitement and unlimited potential, but instead I start feeling lost.  Will I ever be able to shape this into something?

And that's when expectation starts creeping in and ruins the fun.  I expect that after so much time, a painting should start to emerge.  I expect that paintings that look wild and free should not require so much effort to make them look that way.  I expect that a satisfying, finished painting should only take a set amount of time, not the weeks or even months I sometimes go through.  All those expectations shift my focus from the joy of the process over to worry about the finished product.

So once again, I try to let go of those thoughts and return to the present  moment and concentrate on what a dab of royal blue look like next to muted ochre, what a giant brush does to instill some excitement, what a tiny bit of dark does to this light corner....

Process

I have a hard time documenting my process because my paintings change so much along the way that I lose track of which is which.  But I've numbered this batch and will try to show them in the same order each time, so you can see the progression.  The one above started with the mark making shown in the last post.  Panels 2-5 are below, all at the stage where I've been building up layers, playing with possibilities, but yet to find a clear direction for them.

#2-started as black and white

#3-started as all warm colors

#4 started as grid of neutrals

#5-started with black and white collage