Sometimes it's time for a makeover!

Some people go to a salon to get their new groove on.

I am not one of those people.

I, on the other hand, get a big ol' bunch of feelin' fine when I paint over something I've done and am feelin' no love for. Oh yeah, a few swipes of a brush and I get goose-bumps galore! Like the shoe-crack high we women get when we find a great pair of shoes, in our size, on sale. Yeah, I'm not much on lounging around a beauty salon getting my nails done but I'm girly enough to admit to my love of shoes.

A few days ago I posted about the triptych I'm working on. I was loving the background. The cherry blossom branch was 'okay'. Somewhere between branch and adding blossoms I realized I didn't want to paint it anymore. It had become one of those paintings which looked great in my head ... on canvas, not so much. I tinkered with it, mooshed paint around, a bit of detail here and there, more twigs on the branch, a whole day of putzing around and getting more irritated by the minute.

Painting isn't supposed to be irritating.

Fortunately, there is that marvelous cure ... the makeover!

Allow me to demonstrate a painting makeover ...
 
Last place I was when I posted ... tree branch okay but still needed detailing ...

Little blobs of color for blossom placement ... this is when I started getting that seriously irritated thing going on but I was willing to keep working ...

Started detailing the blossoms ...

More detail on the blossoms and branch developed ...

The next day it became this ...

Now it's a nice abstract that I really, really like ...

"Putting My Stamp On It", acrylic on 10" x 30" canvases

Stamp detail ... that is my thumbprint in the box...

I think part of the problem began when I didn't go with my first instinct and do an abstract to start with. I want to but wasn't sure of what to do with one. I couldn't get a solid "idea" formed so I caved to indecision and went with the cherry blossom thing instead.

Some folks might think that abstracts are just a matter of slinging paint at the canvas and voila', it's an abstract painting! There are probably a lot of artists out there who do exactly that. Kudos to them. Not my style. I like to have a basic idea, theme, feeling, or purpose when I do my abstracts. There needs to be a reason behind the work, even if it isn't obvious to the viewers who look at it. I prefer to let them (you) find their own interpretation to a piece of art because that, for me, is how art should be. I may have my own story to tell through the paint, but someone else may see something I never even thought of ... and I like that.

With this abstract my personal story, as is with all my abstract paintings, is explained in the title. For many years my paintings were greatly influenced by others' suggestions, thoughts or opinions. Over time I felt I was losing touch with who I was as an artist and a person. I didn't paint what was in my heart to paint. It got so bad I actually stopped painting. I had lost my enjoyment and satisfaction, lost my love of doing the one thing that means most to me in this world.

Between the painting the branch and painting the blossoms, it hit me I wasn't painting something because I truly wanted to ... I was painting it to hang in a particular place in the house, with a consideration for what the husband might like to have hanging there, too. The longer I worked on it the more I realized I was thinking far more about his reactions to the work and not my own. I was painting from the head and not the heart. The blossom painting felt sort of like stepping back into those cheap, ill-fitting shoes. The abstract is like a mini-salon treatment ... I washed away that mode of thinking and got a groovy new hairstyle.

Namaste', y'all ...