This is the story of how my first painting was very nearly my last.
All art has a story. As the viewer or collector it's a story of where you got it, where you saw it first, what it's of, or who you got it from. For the artist it's something else. It's where we were, it's how we were feeling, it's all the things that went wrong and that one thing that went right by some miracle.
It's sitting on the kitchen floor wondering why you just wasted all that paint and time on something that looks so so awful.
At least that's the story of this painting. I really really hated this one. I even put it in the garbage pile because it was so awful. But my sister found it and loved it, and she convinced me that there was something there and I should just try a little harder. So I fixed the things I hated, added gold to cover the things I couldn't fix (yes it really does make everything better) and by the end I didn't hate it quite as much. It was working on this painting that made me want to keep going, to get better, to make something that I could look at and see as beautiful. I started researching better materials, better methods, I spent forever practicing and eventually, little by little I got better. I still hate this painting. But it is hanging above the sink in my kitchen, its one of the first things I see everyday. Its there because it is the first time I made something where I could look at it and say "that's art". This is the place I almost stopped. But instead it became something else. It became the place where I began and every single beautiful thing that I have created since can be traced back here, to this painting that was so close to being the last.
G