This means I will begin painting at 9 am, I’ll stop at noon for lunch, I’ll continue painting at 12:30 pm and stop again at 5 pm.
No one will call. No one will need me. I won’t need to make an appointment to get my summer tires installed or notice the tiny burgeoning of a recurrence of skin cancer on my forearm.
I’ll be so seduced by the desire to make something perfect that I won’t notice the inanities of the radio blaring in the background.
One of the reasons I turned to photorealism was the temptation of perfection.
If I make the painting look just like the photograph I used as a source then I have, objectively, achieved one of the things I had set out to do.
You may not like what I painted or why or how I painted it but you sure as hell can’t tell me it doesn’t look like a photograph.
(Camrose Apartments, 2005 5.5 X 8" acrylic on paper)
When you’re insecure or unaware of what you’re saying in your paintings it’s easy to become bogged down by the pursuit of perfection.
Perfection is an illusion. The siren song that lures me from the realities of my existence.
After my second sold out show in New York a noted authority on photorealism called my work that of ‘a fine journeyman realist’.
Ouch! After all, the sold out show wasn’t at his gallery.
I’m beginning to understand that the pursuit of perfection is an unsuccessful effort to eliminate any possibility of rejection and at the same time a denial of the humanity in my paintings.
My eyes, my brain and my hands work together in their own unique way. The imperfections are what make the works unique to me.
I’m human and I cannot be perfect. Repeat as needed.
