I have to send an image to Ceres Gallery. It is to represent the work I am showing in the solo show for the brochure.
I hate to commit. The show is many months in front of me. And I may still be working on the pieces until they are sent to the photographer. After the photographs are made, it feels permanent. Website, my print books, future reference.
I remember one of my solo shows here in Atlanta, where I put a tube of cadmium yellow light in my purse. Then upon entering the gallery, where my work had been hung, I walked over to the one of my paintings I felt needing a touch up and I dabbed the paint on with my finger. Cameras and all.
In fact, there were a few wet oil paintings in the show for about two weeks. Until they dried. All because I worked on them, up until the last minute.
Another show, I used a ballpoint pen to touch up a collage. It was during the opening reception and people came rushing over to me, sighing when they saw it was “just me.”
Sending in an image (not this one) feels so permanent. But it will have to do.
Sounds like you’re a perfectionist, Hollis. Nothing wrong with that!
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Oh I am aware of that. I guess painting and the visual arts is like writing. You keep on trying. Never good enough, right?
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Yes, it never feels good enough. 🙂
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Tinkering with something is always the way with creative folks – there is always something new to see.
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That’s a brilliant story about the ballpoint pen.
Is it not difficult to choose just the one image?
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I don’t agonize (I don’t think) over selecting each image or cut up piece or painting section. That, to me, is pleasurable. It is in the end. Where there is no option but to call it finished, that I get a little crazy. It’s like, if you only have money to buy one dress. If you don’t buy the dress, you can have, in your mind, the two dresses you saw in the stores. Whereas to settle on one, you can’t have the other. I have learned to commit, but it is a struggle.
Then years later I go back and look at the piece I never thought of as perfect, and I like it. Go figure! 🙂
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