Somethings Are Worth Waiting For.

Somethings Are Worth Waiting For.

Along the Coastal Path.

How many times have my fellow artists began a painting knowing exactly how it was going to be at the finish? I am always very interested in the process of the production of an artwork. Some artists see a lovely picture feel inspired by it and just feel that they have to paint it. Some then go on to produce a very accurate depiction of the picture or source. Others convey the meaning of the painting but not much more. 

I am sometimes like this but at other times I allow a painting to ferment in y head for days sometimes weeks before it finds its way onto the canvas. The big trouble with this is, that having carried it for so long I now want to get it out of my head and onto the canvas. Working at high intensity I can often complete the largest part of the painting in a few continuous hours of frenzied work.

Then the trouble starts. Keen to see it complete I can rush at it and ruin it beyond saving. How many other things in life have gone along similar lines. It has taken me a very very long time to achieve any sense of patience in my life, and still I fail from time to time. Fortunately this is almost exclusively in my dealings with myself and not with others. I am my worst taskmaster.

This reminds me of the fist time I ever grew seeds of any kind. It was cress seeds on a sheet of wet blotting paper. Fortunately they grew very quickly, but my impatience to have them crow and on a sandwich was alarming.

It is like the boy with the sunflower seeds.

There was once a teacher who gave his pupils some seeds so they could plant, and look after, their very own sunflower. One boy in the class, who loved sunflower seeds, was so excited that he planted the seed and looked after it with great care for many days.

When the first shoot finally appeared, the boy, filled with impatience, went to see his teacher.  "Can I uproot it yet?"  he asked, anxiously. The teacher answered that he would still have to tend the plant for quite some time before he would be able to collect many seeds from just one sunflower. The boy was disappointed, but he kept on looking after his sunflower.

However, he grew increasingly impatient, and did little else but pester his teacher about wanting to take out the plant. Despite the teacher asking him to be patient, as soon as the boy saw the sunflower's first seeds, he cut the plant so he could eat them. But the plant was still green, the seeds were not ripe, and of course they couldn't be eaten.

The boy was devastated: He had put so much effort into caring for the sunflower, but in the end he had squandered it all for a simple lack of patience. And he was even angrier when he saw how enormous his classmates' sunflowers grew. Ultimately, he resolved not to be so impatient in the future, and to listen to his teacher. 

Fortunately, he wasn't completely out of luck, and his friends were good enough to share their delicious sunflower seeds with him.

Todays painting is one painting that was in my head for days as I ran the coastal path near home. It was painted in one sitting and even now when I see it I want to go back and make changes, and probably spoil it. Fortunately for me I cannot it is now hanging in a house a long way from where I stay.