I still have a lot to say but not as many things as I had once thought.
I made a sassy comment on a post the other day about how clouds aren't worth mastering. Days later even I still think it.
I don't even know if anything is really worth mastering. If I mastered clouds I might have a hard time getting away from it. Maybe I wouldn't paint them in some innovative way because I'd rely too much on how I had trained myself. Painting is such a worked task in history. It is very hard to be fresh.
The things I try to master are subtle innuendo. A color, studied, and then dithered from one end of a plane to another. A construction, with balances, fulcrums, ways of forcing the eye. Always trying to skip the rock that extra time.
There's an essay by John Marin I read in college that talked about the construction of a composition that said things so beautifully. I'll have to look it up sometime.
Having the patience to set the brush, each stroke if necessary.
Being as conscious as I can to know my reference points. As boring as that may be.
I love Basquiat because of the way his paintings lack technique. In that way he has his own. When I make a line I wish I had never made one sometimes.
