Latest Painting - Fail

For the first time I'm going to pull back the curtain and let you in on a deep dark secret.  Painting is excruciating.  When you start out you get a picture in your head and your job, as the holder of the brush, is to transform that onto canvas.   Sometimes you get it right, sometimes it stalls but you plug away and every once in a while it just sits there and mocks you as you wrestle with creative paralysis.   

This was supposed to be an early year quick work then onto more challenging stuff.  My early desire to kick something off the easel every week has resulted in this mess that draws dust and disgust.  It was a simple attempt to picture a nighttime scene of a small boat tied at a dock.  I envisioned it as mostly black with just a glimpse of a boat and a lighted dock that draws your eye. 

Something happened that stopped this from turning out like it was in my mind's eye.  I have tried to resurrect it several times with different approaches and, frankly, it isn't working.    

My message with this post is simple.  Sometimes things don't work.  My old boss back at MDH used to say when things didn't work that "it wasn't my fault, it wasn't their fault, it's nobody's fault."  My old boss wasn't always right:  there is a fault to be placed.  Likely my execution sucked or the skill-set lacked ability.  Perhaps the job necessary to create it like I had it envisioned was beyond my capability to bring it to birth.  

So what happens now?  One of three things:

1.  Pitch it.  Just simply get it off the easel, paint over everything with something and start something else.  

2.  Keep slogging through and make something out of it.  

3.  Put it away in the closet somewhere and start something else, and maybe come back to it after some time has passed.  

What am I going to do?  This is a mental roadblock, akin to writer's block, and I think I'll toss it aside and come back to it at a later date.  I need to get moving and have some success so I'm going on to something else.  I already have another in mind, something ready on canvas.  

So, what's the life message?  Persevere or put it away...just keep moving forward.  Not everything always works.  Learn from it, and either stick with it, maybe longer than you should, or toss that sucker and grab something else.  Seems like a good way to look at a lot of things that sometimes tie us up into knots.  Failing isn't the problem, but being stalled is.  Move.