Drawing and redrawing the motif to get myself revved up to continue painting — on this:
https://alethakuschan.wordpress.com/2018/01/17/crepe-myrtles-are-the-best/
Hindsight and Changing Fashion
I remember beginning this painting and what I was thinking. I remember the plans I was making. The dress has a pattern that I was going to add. I was going to draw my arms so that I could work out the details of the pose. I was going to — in short — finish it.
To all my friends to whom I’ve said I was going to do this or that, I dedicate this post. I have the most marvelous intentions to do things, and I have a sometimes miserable record as regards getting them done. Mind, I found this painting (along with some others) in the attic. It’s spring cleaning time, a task that I dive into with great vigor about every decade or so.
Well, I had wonderful plans. But that’s not the half of it. If I had known then what I know now — about the changing fortunes of clothing design — I would have bought two of everything and gladly been out of style wearing the same clothes today as then. I could have stocked up, you know. Could have had one of these dresses for every five years or so — to pull it out and wear again.
The colors were wonderful. The style of the dress and its fit were perfect. The cotton felt breezy and comfortable. And it was a very pretty dress. But, alas, fashion has not profited from helpful innovation of the sort we’ve seen in other sectors of the society and its economy. Don’t know about you, but I think today’s fashions are atrocious (unless your from India, or Ghana, or someplace like that).
Oh, to have a whole closet of them … I loved that dress. Had not even the prevision to finish it properly so that you could see how wonderful it was….
My flowers Then and Now
I’m taking a wild guess and saying I painted this picture about thirty years ago. I experimented with using paper mounted on panel during the early 1980s, and this painting has those characteristics so I must have made it then. I never finished it.
I still often face that problem, a tendency to procrastinate indefinitely in response to fruitless and aimless perfectionism. Back then, of course, I was just learning. Didn’t know which direction the painting should go to be “finished.” Everything was brand new. T’was the first time for “this” and the first time for “that.” One can hardly blame a rookie artist her bit of indecision.
Indeed, tis a pretty good excuse for procratination generally and for aimless perfectionism always — one that I can still use — since you can always be learning new things! I learn something new everyday in life’s expansive adventure. Who can know how the story’s supposed to turn out? I ask you ….
Anyway, that’s my “baby picture” above. And below is one from my maturer self.
I studied the empty spaces back then. And today, my goodness, I’m wildly cluttered. What can it mean? Reason number 4,297 why one should clean house every once in a while …
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