When I first started painting landscapes in oil, I concentrated on painting a lot of quick plein air studies - 45 minutes to 2 hours, max, and I'd be done. It was a great way to get "brush mileage" and to learn to paint quickly and decisively. The drawback was that when I got to the point where I wanted to do larger studio paintings, I always felt like I had to finish them in one sitting - alla prima, like my plein air work - or else they'd loose their freshness and spontaneity. But as I've been painting more over the years, I've found that I really enjoy working on larger paintings for several sessions, making really subtle changes and taking my time with the painting process. Now I put paintings away for a while - anywhere from a couple days to several months - and when I take them back out, I can see better what I need to do to finish them. There's always the danger of overworking a painting, but I feel like I have to take that chance and risk losing the painting  in order to see if I can take my work to a higher level.

I've spent the last year and a half getting ready for my solo show that opens this week. One of the paintings in the show, "Evening Sun" 30x40, went through several transitions before I finally framed it up and took it to the gallery. I had painted the original version quite a while ago, thought it was finished, and set it aside as a "keeper" for the show. But when I pulled it out to frame it a few weeks ago, it was so glaringly obvious to me that I still needed to work on it: the shadows on the rocks were too dark and flat; the sky was too blue; and the trees in the background were too symmetrical and dark. Why didn't I see that the first time around?? The distance of time made me see the painting more objectively. So....back to the easel for yet another round with this one. 

I have a new rule in my studio now: no painting goes out when it's fresh off the easel anymore - the all have to wait for a "cooling off" period before I'm sure they're expressing what I want.