The short answer is to attempt something in which the emotional potential of the idea seems impossible to control, even before you have started to paint.
My Italian project is moving ahead quite well; but today I began a new piece that has worried me from the moment I had the initial idea. Never before have I been reduced to tears simply by the germ of an idea for a picture. The subject of the picture is the Italian rural women during the First World War who were recruited to act as porters carrying supplies to the front lines, high in the mountains, in baskets the size of an expedition ruck-sack. I’m not entirely sure why the story should carry such an emotional impact, but it does.
I believe that an emotional dimension is indispensable for my own art (which is partly why I’m so suspicious of “conceptual art”, but that’s another story.) It has to be contained within some compositional form, however, and an undisciplined expressionist splurge probably never works. My problem is to do justice to the emotion while producing a piece that is thoroughly coherent, and I don’t find that an easy prospect. On this occasion (to quote one of my previous blog entries) I am afraid of failing. Nevertheless, I have the idea blocked in, and I press ahead. One phrase does seem to offer firm guidance: it’s the old adage “Keep it simple, stupid.”