When the Paint Dies

There are moments in the process when the painting simply dies on you.

I had such a painting two months ago. I worked on it for three weeks. I looked at it one morning and said: it's dead.

Not really dead — but it had lost its life. The lines were there, the colour was there, but something was missing. That thing that makes a painting a painting.

I didn't give up on it. I stood in front of it for two days without touching it. On the third day I understood what was missing: my permission to enter it.

When we start painting, we enter it freely. But as we progress, there comes a moment when we're afraid to ruin what we've already built. And that fear kills the painting.

I came back, took a large brush, and 'destroyed' part of what I'd built. And the painting came back to life.