 Once a painting's finished, then it's time for a decision...does it stay or does it go? Do I sell it, or do I never want to part with it? All my artwork comes from the soul, but it's certainly true that some pieces are harder to separate from than others. I imagine it's a bit like re-homing puppies: you know you can't keep them, and the whole point is to find new owners for them, but there's always that one that stares at you from the corner, with big mournful eyes, saying 'nooo, you don't want to sell meee....I'm part of you...there won't be another like meee ever again....'
And maybe that's the fear, that something about this particular painting, that combination of light and colour, this mix of energy, passion, memory and skill that went into making the work will never fall together again in such a harmonious way (even if nobody else can see or feel it). It's a completely personal response to making your own art- of course nowadays anyone can send a photographic file off and get back a very skillful reproduction of a favourite painting- yet it's never quite the same as having the original. Actually, it doesn't even have to be a particularly good painting; this one above I painted about twenty years ago, and it has many things 'wrong' with it - (the white border, the paint is flat and dead in places)...yet it's been with me in every house I've lived in since then, and I would never part with it; for some reason it means something to me which goes beyond objective skill or imagery, and it makes me, simply, happy. Not that having a deep emotional response to a work always lasts, because it doesn't. Once or twice I've become very attached to a particular painting, and hung back from selling it...only to find a week, month or year later that the way I'm painting now is more interesting to me, and I can let go of past work (fairly) easily. So that's it then, the ebb and flow, making work and letting it go, and trying to remember that the breath always replenishes itself.
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