endings and postponements

Part of this process called art is knowing when to stop. It's a hard lesson that I learned doing watercolor--things can be going swimmingly, and then you go back into the painting with just one more stroke, and it's over. In watercolor, there's not much going back. At least in fabric, you can often unstitch and recover--but if you're using paints or dyes, not so much. Time to use the only real solution I ever found in watercolor--cropping down to the best picture you can get out of the paper.

But sometimes, you realize just in time and stop yourself--pull back, set the piece aside so you can think about it, wait for another day. That's what I've done with this piece. Ann and I discussed it on Skype (me making her dizzy by swinging the laptop built-in camera around so she could see all the details), came up with some ideas. The next day I tried one of the ideas, kind of liked it, but in the end decided to fold it up and put it away for awhile. It's just not going in a good direction, and I want to think about how to correct the course before I go to far. I think it may be too late for unsewing--cropping may be the only answer. But I need distance and time to decide that.

Distance and time are the only ways I can objectively critique my art. Too soon, and the amount of work I've put into a piece or the adoration I have for a particular piece of cloth cloud my vision. Or sometimes I've tried so hard and failed that I just hate the piece. Given some time, I usually come back around to it, and often I find a way to make it better. Not always, but often enough.

And sometimes I get it right the first time:



That is all.