Post-It Notes: A New Painting

Making a painting is like getting a new name—you have to go through all the rigmarole to get into the position where you can finally feel free enough of the past, all the mistakes you’ve made and the ones that have been hung around your neck from looking at all that art over the years by artists much more talented.

Obstacles too have to be faced, as nothing is effortless.

Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. Symphony No. 9 came to be known as The Choral. It’s said that he said he was prepared to write a 10th, wanting “to create in it a new gravitational force…this time without a chorus.”

The impelation when creating: that this has to become something, it can’t be nothing. Yet there are stretches of time when things don’t go according to plan.

At times when making a painting you feel like a blood donor who doesn’t get the lollipop he was promised once he’s been drained. Having gotten nowhere you keep going, thinking a spill or an overlap might help, an accident, profane or possibly, divine.

‘Post-It Notes’, oil, acrylic, pencil, 24” X 24”. 2022.