On Working Without Certainty

There are often several paintings unfolding at the same time. Not as a strategy, but as a necessity. One image asks a question that another cannot answer.

The questions return, quietly.

Does this surface resist, or does it yield? 

Is the paint meant to assert itself, or disappear? 

Should the stroke arrive heavy and deliberate, 

Or thin enough to fall away from the canvas?

The safety net is rarely present. More often, there is only doubt and the need to remain with it. I retreat inward, not to escape the work, but to listen before intervening.

Possibilities are tested long before they are physical. They are turned over, set aside, and approached again from another angle. Paint consistency. Pressure. Tempo. Each option waits to reveal itself as either excess or necessity.

Clarity may arrive in seconds. At other times, it takes minutes. Or days.

The painting must be allowed to exist first in its own metaphysical state, unresolved, unstable, and incomplete.

Only then does structure begin to appear. 

Only then do I rise from the chair to place the stroke.

On Waiting

Waiting is not the absence of work. 

It is work that extends beyond action.

What remains unresolved in the painting must be given time to remain so.

Not everything that feels urgent is ready to be addressed.

The hand stays still while attention sharpens.

Is the painting asking to be held back? Or is it waiting to be released?

Patience is often mistaken for passivity.

In practice, it is an active state, one that requires trust.

Trust that the work will declare itself.

Trust that restraint can be more exact than intervention.

Time does not move evenly in the studio. Seconds compress.

Days expand. What matters is not duration, but readiness.

The work advances when waiting has done its part.