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Hang on Studio Wall
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With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

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You find me in philosophical mood - wait, stop, come back!  Allow me this brief witter.... Surveying stacks of unsold paintings - I always have more of those than any list of the sold, and that I imagine to be generally and distressingly true of most of us - I stopped and asked myself why?  Not why haven't they sold, but why we keep going on painting when we already have enough canvases to patch a hole in the roof - actually, in more than one roof?  Why do we do it?  It's all very well to answer "because I must/it's what I'm here for/I'm compelled to by whatever fancy explanation we care to imply  - that I'm compelled by the muse, moved by the spirit", (and similar drivel) but that's just vague rationalizing and another way of saying "damned if I know!".  So here is my theory.  We know we can't achieve perfection, but we're all trying to get there - by increments, by plateaux: one step towards Rembrandt (other artists are available), one move beyond where we were.  We're all trying to get there, wherever for us "there" might be.  So we keep on: it's in that sense that we have no real choice - we're not necessarily driven by our daemons, responding to some celestial call, we're just trying to improve: what Beckett called "try again; fail better". So what if we DID get there?  What would we do if we reached the very top of this mountain we're trying to climb?  Would we know we had?  And if we had - would we then be able to just stop?  The thing about artists is that nearly all of them have gone on and on (rather like this post) and it's the journey we see in their work which may be as important in appreciating it as any result they achieve.   Right, I'll have my Ph.D now then, thanks very much: I'd look lovely in academic regalia.  

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by Robert Jones, Napa

Denise Cat

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We are always trying to get there to improve from what we did previously. We are compelled to strive on and practice, gain experience and do better. Why, because we just love it. I will never get there because I started too late but it doesn't stop me trying. I've just sketched my portrait and now I'm going to paint it in watercolour. How will it turn out, I don't know. Could I make a mess, possibly. Will I work loose and with washes. I'm not sure. It's all about getting the paints out and applying what you have learned so far and experimenting.

Alan Bickley

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Denise… I started painting very early, and I’ll never get ‘there’ either, It doesn’t matter when you started. We’re always striving for better, that’s what keeps me going anyway - there is no ‘there’… Those self- preening artists amongst us, and I’ve come across a few on here, they aren’t ‘there’… they just think that they are!
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Paul (Dixie) Dean

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What will I do when I get there ,not a problem I won’t get there as I missed the early bus to where it is . I would probably get bored with been there and look for something else it’s the challenge and the failed paintings that get you fired up to continue . Even if you do the best painting  you  ever have in the eyes of others in yours it still won’t be there , often those who profess perfection and that they have mastered the art , think again my friend , I suspect that many of the famous artists who ended up in asylums were driven there by their attempts at achieving perfection and never getting the perfection they desired. I’ve come to accept that what I do is what I do if it’s halfway decent than that's good if it’s better we’ll that’s to put it bluntly a bloody miracle. 

Norrette Moore

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Doing some holiday walking with friends in the past, I was often asked "did you enjoy that sense of achievement?" My answer was no. I may have enjoyed the view from the top, or the journey up...but a sense of "I've done it!" no, not really. I enjoy the act of putting paint on a surface, of adding colour where there was none, of even making a photographic view look like how I felt at the time. I miss it when I don't do it. And it doesn't half take your mind off international news, and next doors' home improvements!