All artists know about this. It’s when you totally rearrange a painting around a cute bird you painted that you really like. Its when you are so much in love with the idea that you ignore the fact that the artwork is actually really horrible. It’s when you proudly show off your beautiful artwork to everybody only to be mortified a year later on realizing that it is a truly heinous piece of art.

I call this “Artistic Blindness” and I have many examples.

The piece above is a great example. I even took photos and finished it because I liked the idea and how the eyes came out. It’s actually really hard to show works that you know are failures, the knowing makes a big difference.

I am a finisher though I think it’s my upbringing. Even at 51 years of age at a restaurant I will eat the salad first ( sometimes yucky although nutritious ) before the other tasty morsels on the plate, so I finish the plate. (Thanks a lot Mum!) So often even when I know an artwork is not working I hate to give up on it.

I tried again with this idea, I call this one “Mrs. No-neck”. Failures are not so bad, they keep you humble and teach you more than your successes.

One of my more glaring examples was when at art school. The waist high two piece artwork was made from wire and plaster, it was supposed to represent limbs in an organic style free from the body (I did way too much thinking at art school! ) I proudly took it home where my Mum (a talented artist herself) let me put it on her front lawn where it sat all white and glorious for many years.

The one thing it took me a few years to realize was that it looked like a giant calcified dog turd, only enhanced over time by the moss growing on it.