So What Happened?

So much more to do to our new house but we’re nearly there! Basically the house still looks like a huge storage space as we await some rooms to be done up completely. Last week I spent the days unboxing my extensive Hello Kitty collection as we bought new display cabinets and there is more to come. And juggling work on top of that! It’s been a bit difficult to focus properly on artwork but I do promise myself to spend a few hours a day on creative activities as well as fitness. The other day began with calmly experimenting with my range of colored India Inks. So far great. Then once dry, I added some collages of paper napkin. Then I proceeded in spreading some orange and yellow India inks.

However, I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea after all. Ever had that experience in which you find some things looked better before? In this case, I liked the green and turquoise mix I had created in the beginning and should have left it at that, telling myself, “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken”. However, I kept going on and on adding more hoping things would improve. It didn’t. Perhaps today I was not quite with it. To be honest, I found it hard to focus because I was constantly getting distracted with so much on my mind. I have also been exhausted. As such, I was constantly getting frustrated with my painting. Nope, this is clearly not working out. So what did I do?

Well I had a couple of choices: Keep working on it, cover it up and start over, create a negative space painting or just rip it up! It’s not often that I resort to the last choice but believe me I was not happy at all. I was not in the mood at all to paint on top anymore and knew it wasn’t going to help. So yes, I just tore the offending page out of my sketchbook and ripped it up! Did I feel good about it? Initially yes. Then “uh oh”. However, once the paper was in shreds, it then dawned on me. Each shred looked special on its own and much better than as a whole. Inspired by Juliette Crane’s ideas in her Serendipity I classes recently, I went about literally picking up the pieces again and starting over. Of course, collage the bits of paper and recreate, who would have thought!

So this would probably a classic example of when things happen for a reason. Sometimes, a whole painting does not look that great but parts of it are mysteriously stunning. Each piece has a story so to speak. Nest time then, I know that if things are not working out with a painting then don’t fret. There is always a way around it, and this is one of them!

To be continued….