Listening

For the past two weeks I have been struggling with three different pastels, each very different from the other other but all of them giving me fits.  One is nearly done but not quite there.  The other I may give up on, it's been wiped down twice already.  And then there is this one.

Drifting Fenceline 9x12 pastel, copyright 2013

It started out as a painting of a plowed field, snow covering the furrows in rows behind one lone fencepost.  It works quite nicely as a photo.  But those nice neat little rows did not want to work in a painting.  First the perspective was wrong.  Then the shadows.  Then the color.  The pastel layers kept getting thicker and thicker until I finally realized I was just making mud - or perhaps slush would be a more appropriate term.

Last night I finally gave in, wiped the snow off completely and started over.  It just did not want to be a plowed field, and I'm slowly starting to learn to "listen" to my paintings.   They want to be painted, but they sometimes seem to have their own opinion about what they want to say.  And this one was reminding me to simplify - so that's what I did.