A Glimpse Behind the Curtain of Paint

This is a detail from a self portrait I painted in 2007. It is now buried in the ocean, in a sense, because I painted this over it:

The self-portrait had been an assignment in Zhi Lin’s class at the UW. He was a very exacting instructor, and because of this I learned much from that one class. But that also means I spent about 60 hours on this painting… and while that’s nothing to some artists, to me it felt like years. I have always felt that I capture the essence of what I’m painting best when I work quickly and keep it fresh. There is always the battle to not overwork a piece and “close it down,” as they would say in critiques. Well, the self-portrait had closed down for me, and maybe I was also sensitive to my brother’s comment that I looked sad in it. I tried to explain to him that the expression is not SAD but REFLECTIVE, but the fact remained that I didn’t particularly want it hanging around for years after I finished it. So, one day I just started slashing across it with turquoise colors and experienced a sort of elation as the thing that was in my heart jumped out onto the canvas. THIS is what I want to be looking at: in just a few hours, an image had emerged of my friend Audra’s favorite beach in Aruba painted from the memory of my 10-day visit there.