Pushing Positivity

Yesterday was another terrible day in the studio. Nothing was working, and with each layer of paint applied, I was getting more frustrated. It was the time that I was wasting and of course the paint that I was pouring down the drain that was getting to me the most. My only goal for the past few days has been to create a green painting, which I can learn to love. I've always had trouble with that color and how much of the canvas I would allow it to own and it was time that I confronted it and found MY green: the shade that worked for me. Initially, I thought a dark, rich green, like a rich mix of Emerald and Viridian was what I wanted. I laid down a glaze of the paint over a prepped base of texture and other color, and I loved what I saw but as I began to add other colors to the piece and build on the green, everything just fell apart. I even brought in some gold because I was certain that the gold would work well with the green, but it didn't change the fact that the green wouldn't play well with others at all, and I wasn't sure if it could hold an entire painting on its shoulders.

At some point, I decided to reverse my perspective and just think of it as 'no bad day in the studio is a failure because instead of what I failed to achieve, I've ended up learning 100 different things that don't work and that knowledge is power'. It definitely helped me through the day as I kept trying to make the piece work. Here are a few shots of its journey and I hope I can bring some life back into it or I will end up shelving the painting. Maybe it isn't time to form that relationship with Green as yet.