Wrestling for a Resolution, the Creative Struggle

Quite some time ago I took to the task of developing a recent drawing into a painting. I found it at times a struggle to understand the dynamic aspects the drawing had projected for me and I found myself wrestling to capture some of those same nuisances within the painting. I laboured over this painting for over six months trying to reconcile the image. At times friends would tell me to let it go, maybe it just isn’t going to work. I distracted myself with other visual works till I could feel confident to approach the painting again.

I was determined to find a way to resolve it, endless revisions were layered over the painting. Luckily I do not paint thick layers in my work allowing me to make revisions without the evidence of the previous attempts. It would have been easier to abandon this work, but I needed to resolve it, sometimes adversity tells you more than an image that comes together quickly. Part of the creative struggle is to find a way to mediate the difficult tasks and learn from them. I kept revisiting it, at times just starring at it trying to find the clues. When I finally tackled the contour white lines again, the painting found a resolution.

I thought about documenting the various stages but found myself trying to reconcile the work rather than documenting my struggle. In my own mind I saw the evolution and the variation of the modeling of both the figure and the contour overlay and hopefully learned from it.

I often tell my students that the work they are creating is just a moment in time, that they will continue to make more in the future and perhaps for this moment, this is the best that a particular piece will be. I think over all I am happy with the way I resolved the work, but as I say to my students, this is just a moment and in this moment I think this worked out.