After a few of you shared some thoughts with me regarding my last post, I realized that what I had written was incomplete in a sense. So, not so much to explain myself here, but to elaborate on what most every artist, maybe every single one of us, goes through – that is, of course unless we put ourselves in a state of denial.

With my last post, I’d presented what is actually a broad idea a bit too briefly and in so doing, I unfairly diminished it, so I decided to continue with this failure thing for a bit with this post – a “deuxiéme partie” of my last. Bear in mind that the piece, the painting I refer to (which really isn’t failure, per say), is just not what I had envisioned, its that the failure of it which I shared with you was simply a failure of having an image meet my own expectation. I should also add that sometimes when a piece isn’t what I’d envisioned, it is even more than that, an even greater success than hoped for, so really failure is just a coming up short versus coming up extra (to put it in terms of black and white, of pregnant or not pregnant, or of hand-grenades).

Being a long-winded, word-crafty, kind of guy, and I can’t just leave things at that, we need to define failure and come to terms with it so that were on the same page and using the same language. The word failure in my own context isn’t a bad thing, since nothing is really a failure – its not really a bad word. That being said, I think all artists experience failure (which I may have already said). What it does to each of us, and how it affects us depends on how we define this otherwise god-awful, terrible word. I’m not berating the concept just to soothe my own fragile ego, neither am I attempting to avoid admission of downright miserable failure. Nor am I trying to save my own ass by the denial of the sheer truth of my own shortcomings (it is, after all, just a painting). Also, I wouldn’t have you, by nature of my example, think that by taking the same attitude of avoidance will help you to soothe your own ego, I just ask that failure be reconsidered as not so bad. However, we all do, indeed, have our own paths to travel, and our own pains to endure. To be honest, though, I must ask myself this (putting all ego aside, being it can be highly over-rated, but also pretty fun when you play with it vs. have it play with you), why must failure, even to a mild degree, be so darned frustrating?

So, about paintings – one could say a painting is done when there’s nothing left to do that could improve it (re: Odd Nerdrum). Sadly, things cannot be so simple, since the same can be said about a painting that has failed (a bit of a conundrum, it is). This isn’t a bad thing, having a painting fail (yup, here’s another parenthetic note – I must continue to repeat myself if I’m to believe my own words). Failure has happened to the best of us and the worst of us, with the best of us moving on to happily paint some more, and the worst of us making great contributions towards the image of the emotionally haunted, tortured artist. Some artists will seemingly abandon a painting for a year or more, only to return with the solution that will bring things to a successful completion. Perhaps my failure is just an unfinished painting with a yet-to-find solution, but for the life of me and my left hand (I refuse to offer up my brush hand, the right one), I can’t think of what to do next – there’s nothing I can do at this point to improve it. Of course, maybe, as I might not have said, it doesn’t need improving and is fine as it is. Maybe I’ll awaken tomorrow and see that! By now, you must be seeing the myriad of possibility that surrounds a so-called “failed painting.”

And yet, here’s another possibility – it needs be said that not all drawings are destined, or should become, paintings. That’s like saying that every napkin doodle needs to become a developed line drawing, or that every line drawing needs to have tonality added – not every drawing is destined to be matted and framed and hung, and not every drawing should become a painting. If every drawing were meant for such a grand existence, the job of an artist would be so overwhelming, every one of us would end up in a Bellevue or Montpon or any one of those clinical type places that gave birth to both the frontal lobotomy and true outsider art. If I had to paint every sketch or drawing I’ve ever done, my backlog would be listed as uncountable and uncomfortable to consider. I’d have to burn the lot! Its a painter’s job to recognize what needs to be painted, and what should never be pursued.

Paintings are not just drawings with color added to them. There’s a fine and foggy, misty land that allows a drawing to cross into that realm of becoming a painting – its like crossing into the magical lands of Avalon. That being said, no one has ever said getting to Avalon is easy – it can be rather painful, even excruciating, at times, meaning that getting there might just be the most difficult thing one can do. With the painting in question, my recent failure, its certainly not that the drawing was its own, complete entity not needing to be painted, since this painting didn’t start with a drawing. I had a subject, or topic, that I wanted to cover and I just started painting, beginning with a nearly straight line across the bottom of the canvas. There was no need for preliminary sketches, studies, comps or whatever else there may be. Maybe my failure lies in the lack of preparation and a drawing would have sorted out any future problems, but I could swear that the idea was clear enough to me to not need all those frills, bells and whistles (i.e. preparation) to justify my existence as a painter. Plenty of paintings come to be without pre-existent drawings.

None of this is about self-esteem, nor does it necessarily have to be, though it could be if I chose it so. If I were that aforementioned, moody-type artist (which I’m not, contrary to what my wife believes), then the self-esteem thing might need to be examined, or not – how would I know? I have no problem with the occasional canvas set aside for a future but unforeseen solution to awaken it, to finally meet my own strict levels of success and completion, nor do I have a problem with discovering a dust-covered canvas in a dark, forgotten corner of my studio just awaiting a good overpaint, especially if I’ve run out of supports to paint on and have been lax about ordering supplies!

Maybe I need my paintings to be good for my feelings to be good? I’m gunna have to say that this may be the case, but not in this case (right?). Having done well when one only has to please oneself is the crux of pride and the feeling good about oneself. This is axiomatic, but certainly not enough to send a veteran brush-slinger into the spiraling depths of despair, is it? C’mon now – toughen up, those blisters on your fingers caused by burning hours of wielding your sword-like brushes will soon turn to well-conditioned callouses – through your blood, sweat and tears, you will gain those painter’s badges of courage and mettle.

Below is an example of the life, or destiny, of a perfectly good drawing. Once finished, in a sketchy sort of way, doubts of its extended future arose, in spite of my specific intentions that this be a drawing designed to be carried into the colorful land of Avalon. Where this doubt came from I don’t know – a holdover suddenly arising from the failure of the last painting maybe – it certainly wasn’t there during the drawing process itself. I did, however, pursue that plan of making it a painting, so continued to develop it. The drawing is now crossing the mists into Avalon. It has revealed its problems thus far, and solutions to improve it have been discovered. Does any of this ensure success? That’s not to be known yet.

So now, before we end up in a heady discussion of drawing and painting, I will just mention that with these two, one may or may not depend on the other while the other can be completely ambivalent at times – both can be mutually exclusive of each other. They are two completely different, independent things which may or may not be attracted, or drawn, to each other. With that, I’ll just have to say more on this in my next post.

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