Usually, I don’t show a painting in progress to my artist friends. I prefer to wait until it’s more finished before inviting constructive comments. But yesterday, I showed this painting to an art buddy who remarked that it’s finished. That took me by surprise, because I still have many ideas for how to continue working on what I only considered an ‘underpainting’ of a girl diving to the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Diving, first try
Earlier, during lunch, some of the artists had talked about how difficult it can be to know when a work is truly finished — and how the danger lies in overworking it and destroying what makes it alive. With that in mind, instead of continuing to layer more onto this painting, I’ve decided to paint the same motif again and experiment with those further ideas in a fresh version.
Two years later, I finished the second version just in time to submit it to the 2025 Northwestern Artists Juried Show at the Dennos Museum in Traverse City. The painting was accepted, and I had the chance to discuss it in an artist talk there this May.
I love this painting, Birget. Your creativity is everpresent. I have ruined drawings by not knowing when to stop. I try to remind myself that more often than not, less is more, and to leave space so that the viewer’s imagination can participate. Even with faces, abstracts, whatever, I try to remind myself to not overdo. Are there art rules to help us know when to stop?
Thank you, Janny. What a wonderful idea to leave space for the viewer’s imagination. I will keep that in mind.- I don’t think there are any rules, just learning oneself
In writing, I found that it is possible by doing more to make it better. Once I wrote an abstract for a scientific meeting. It started out as badly verbose. Reading one of Hemingway’s short story helped me to change it into a properly terse report. In oil painting, I now sometimes do the same, adding a new layer, obscuring what I didn’t like. Remembering one of Singer Sargent’s water colors, that I saw at the Brooklyn museum, he used white gouache to obscure the background creating a foaming brook. Thus working more, depending on the medium, may help to simplify.