Unfinished: “Florida Keys Fishing Boats”

Day 192 of my artwork retrospective

“Easy Does It” and “Where Is It?” (two separate paintings) alkyd on canvas © Donna McVicar Kazo

I forget who said, “a painting is never finished; it just stops in interesting places.”

Uh-huh.

Man, I do like to torture myself. I knew eventually I’d dig out these unfinished paintings and experience that familiar feeling of why couldn’t I do it? Why wasn’t I able to see enough detail, do better with mixing my paint, wield my brushes with enough confidence to take them to the finish line? Why did I give up?

Or maybe I didn’t give up. Maybe I intended to get back to them after they sat a while, and life got in the way. I was always pushing my own projects to the back of the line, so as to not disappoint my paying customers.

What most people don’t understand is that artists usually work “on spec” which means we might work an 80-hour week, producing art to become inventory, that might never sell. So taking the time away from a sure paycheck was risky.

How could these canvases be over 20 years old? Life was really busy for me then. Still…

There certainly have been times when I put a painting aside because it wasn’t matching the one in my head, and then when I came back to it, realized it could stand on its own. Maybe that’s what I was hoping would happen with Where Is It? and Easy Does It.