Wasted effort

I had a date with the professor again last night. Not really a date, more of a meeting of the minds. At some point the professor asked me if I ever felt like I was wasting paper and paint when I was in my studio.

No one ever asked me that before. I'm not sure if I answered, or if I seriously answered, because I was kind of hitting on the bartender.

There is a point here. For many years I would rummage through garage sales and thrift stores, in search of already painted canvases that I would take home and "improve." There was even a once yearly sale in the neighborhood that I would stake out and buy all the donated canvases and take them home and paint over whatever someone else had labored to create.

So, I sat there, wondering if all those people had ever thought if they were wasting canvas and paint when they were creating. Then today, while I was working so hard to save a mess of a painting it dawned on me, just how many times I do waste paper or canvas and just gallons of paint. Not waste really, because often times I do paint over my own flawed work and try and come up with something new. In some cases the canvas will have a real heft to it, which generally means I have painted over a variety of screw ups.

So there I was, dancing around this large piece of paper, laying on my floor, absorbing paint upon paint, and I would step back and look and sense something could be done, so I would find something else, some other color, a new mood as it were. Finally, I stepped away and when I came back it dawned on me, I had been painting something that was just a complete mess. No saving, no paint overs, just a mess.

This hardly ever happens.