The Process

I’m not Van Gogh who dragged his easel out

Into the fields of France, whose magic sight

Enabled him with swift, sure strokes to paint

An earless portrait or a starry night.

No. I prep a canvas with leftover paint

And hope beyond hope that pictures emerge.

No clean clear canvas surfaces for me:

A dirty plane will make my painting surge.

It doesn’t work? I gesso over, or

Slash the canvas and rip it from the frame

Without a fear. Defeat creates new work.

I move from failure - and refuse all blame.

I am not Hemingway who set a sheet

Of paper on his desk, picked up a pen

And wrote of bullfights, civil wars - in fact, 

Whole books before he set it down again.

I jot ideas, draw, scratch through, revise.

Revise again. My paper’s not pristine.

I take a breath, consider, write some more.

Or print out what I have, start a new screen.

I own no failure - only lessons new.

Each time applying what I learned to do.

I considered the painting on the right a failure (acrylic on 16 x 20 inches stretched canvas). I ripped the canvas off and restretched new canvas. The painting on the left of Owen, age 11, is much better, I believe. Ignore the shadow at the top of the portrait. Grace and mercy, remember?