How to Deal With Being Better
This is a DO-OVER.
Of this:
See why?
It’s been only two years, but I am a much better painter now than even two years ago. And this is at the tag end of a forty-year career as a professional artist. I seem to be doing a lot of repaints recently, mostly because quite a few of the paintings I did even a couple of years ago have begun to annoy me. Actually, most of my paintings begin to annoy me after only about twenty-four hours. Perhaps one in twenty still seems pretty good to me after a few weeks. And perhaps one in fifty or so survives for a year.
This is not unusual, of course. Most people who make paintings or music or novels or countless (well, not really countless, but you get my point) other things have the same problem. We’re always taking another look at prior work and sniffing it like week-old chicken. Sometimes, it stinks so badly that it simply MUST be discarded. The good thing about some of my more odiferous paintings is that they haven’t yet sold and can be reprocessed with no one knowing the difference — unless I tell on myself as I’m doing now.
So what about the ones that have sold and are beyond my reach? Well, I just have to accept that someone loves what I no longer do. I could be annoyed when someone falls in love with an ex (wife, girlfriend, childhood home). But I can’t blame the lover for loving that which I no longer do. Besides, their love lets me pay my bills.
Some of my collectors are horrified at the idea that I’d paint over anything I’ve created. But when I show them the comparison, most get it.
So if you’ve created some art that has “gone off” and you still have possession, don’t let it haunt you. Burn it. Give it a ceremonious acid bath. Paint over it. It’s yours, after all. And you can keep a photo to remind yourself —as do I — that you can still turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse… at least until that one begins to fail the smell test, too.
