You know when you have arrived. Of course, it is generally recognised that a significant problem for any painter is knowing exactly when a picture is finished. There is usually that dreadful period when you spend ages just staring at the thing, trying to work out why it doesn’t yet feel exactly right. Perhaps the offending object sits on the easel for days, as you hope that, catching sight of it as you pass, there will be that sudden insight into the final touch that is required in order to permit you to sign it and quit.
There is another aspect to this problem, however, that is almost equally frustrating. How do you know when a picture is actually under way? Is the idea lurking in the back of your mind really the basis for a viable project? Which of those scribbled notes is going to sit there for ever, never progressing beyond that first intuition? Even when something is up on the easel it can run out of steam before it even merits the term “picture”.
At the moment I am, paradoxically, suffering from both of these painful conditions. The piece on which I have been working for several days is approaching some kind of resolution. But is that area too intense a blue? Should I take it back a bit? Do I need to develop the texture in that area a little more, or would that be distracting? On the other hand, I do want to take up another project I set aside before Christmas, and return to my experiments with mono prints. Will that lead anywhere, or should I just stick to what I know? What is in my head feels good, but we’ve been here before!
I wonder how much of my artistic life has been spent in this state of indeterminacy. At least with a train you know when you are under way, and you know when you are there.