I guess it's a good thing. But it's starting to feel a little unproductive. I work tirelessly on composing new paintings, then I build the stretchers, stretch and gesso the canvas, sketch the composition onto the primed surface - and then I should be ready to go. But too often, after staring at my source material for too long, I realize that I can make a better painting, that the composition can be stronger, more interesting, more complex, more subtle, more dynamic...and so I go back to the drawing board. I keep working through the ideas that are coming fast and furious, but I don't have a whole lot of paintings coming out of the process. At least not yet. I'm trying to be patient, knowing that my ideas are progressing and trying to reassure myself that it is better to have discarded many sub-standard plans than to produce multiple sub-standard paintings. Although I have my share of failed paintings in the trash as well.

One of my biggest challenges right now is confronting the demand for a so-called "body of work". I'm getting frustrated by the constraints that phrase implies. I certainly don't want to produce a random group of paintings, but how many different variations can you explore before it's just indecisive? And yet why would I make 10 paintings based on one approach when after two or three paintings, I think of some new approach that could be better?

Oh - and by the way, I came up with a new approach today. Scrapped two planned paintings. Start the new plan tomorrow.

God help me.