My aversion to wasting paint has me running madly off in different directions.
Long story short: The paint I was using on my big stripy pear got too runny and messy for the refinement stage of the process. But as I have mentioned before, I hate wasting paint and didn't want to just throw it out. So instead I used it for the first layer on another in the stripy pear series (which I posted yesterday), and then yet another (this one 24 x 24"):
So now I have three of these on the go. I need to choose one to try to finish in time for the Beach Studio Tour next week:
Even after that, I still had some runny paint left in my palette, so I flung it (literally) at a big "Waste Not Whatnot" that I have had on the go for years. That was fun -- a nice change of pace -- and tempted me to veer off in that direction for a while to work on this piece (because it seems close to :completion, which is exciting):
And this highlights my ongoing dilemma: my desire to work in wildly different styles, which is fun for me, but goes against the conventional wisdom for working artists, which is to develop a recognizable style and stick to it... at least long enough to create a sizable, consistent, and coherent body of work.
Will I be able to strike the balance between pleasing myself and pleasing others? Or does the work that excites me the most inevitably come across as the most exciting to the viewer?
So many questions, so many works in progress, so little time!