Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Throwing Art Away

To throw away or not to throw away...When art is so bad there is no recourse but to throw it away. Back some months ago, how long--I have no idea, I hung up a white sheet of 20"x30" pastel paper on my dinning room wall, taped off the outside so the paper would stay on the wall and so I could create a border on the finished piece. I started with a plain brown planter, added a half moon red table on which the pot sat. That's as far as the painting went for months. I didn't like the pot. It was too brown, too plain, too whatever. I should have added the flowers first and then put in the pot between the leaves and petals. Too late now. Such a nagging little thought, but it haunted me. Each day I walked by the painting on my way to the kitchen and out the door for work. After a while I successfully ignored the painting; actually forgot about it until one day inspiration hit and I tried to add some blue and grey flowers above the pot to soften it a bit. No good. Surveying my work from across the room I was disappointed. The blue and grey flowers on top of the brown pot now resembled an ice cream cone. Ugh!! Where had my creativity gone? Had it been bested by a brown pot? It certainly seemed so. Weeks, months went by and again a spark of inspiration came. This time I would cover my mistake with wedges of bright blue and red. The result was terrible--an insult to the eye. Can art go from worse to much worse? Yes, yes it can and mine did. The painting still hangs in the dinning room, still is purposely ignored. I cannot think of anything that would salvage the painting at this point other than wading it up and throwing it in the garbage. I think it would be best for the sake of my creativity to throw it out. But would throwing it out allow me to forget about it and move on at this point? I hope so.