Painter’s block – yes, it’s a thing.

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I spent close to 40 hours preparing and painting, and over three months pondering how to complete, a 3′ x 4′ work based on the photo of a floating market in Indonesia. It is a fantastic photo, apparently taken from a bridge, of women in longboats full of fruits, vegetables and grains on a muddy river. I wanted to somehow convey the path of some of this produce from this market, through various other markets, finally ending up in a supermarket basket, all in the framework of these boats.

I still think it is an interesting concept, but can I make it beautiful? What Bucky Fuller said kept haunting me:

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty.
But when I’ve finished, if the solution isn’t beautiful, I know it’s wrong.”

Of course, I was thinking about beauty.

So, today, I painted over all of the boats and the few women and the few bunches of bananas and baskets of fruit I had painted. It was the emotional equivalent of a writer shredding the first 50 pages of the next, great American novel.

I have another idea for the canvas. Hopefully, you will see it posted here in less than four months.

Update, 10/14/2019: I finished the new painting on this canvas over the weekend. It took me over a week to do. I just finished it with an intense session out in the public at the Franconia fall Fest of Saturday and the early Sunday mornig before returning to show it there. Here is the result.