Quotes to be remembered

Here's a quote from Picasso that resonates with me today.

The artist goes through states of fullness and emptiness, and that is all there is to the mystery of art.

Pablo Picasso

I've been varnishing paintings this week - and learning a lot in the process about the fickle nature of varnish. After one piece clotted up and gelled alarmingly in the warmth of my studio and I washed it off hurriedly, I also learned a lot about the outer limits of acrylic to be soluble!

Glazes that I'd made with a dilute solution of paint just melted off the surface of my canvas and trickled own the sink - and those I'd worked with glazing medium stayed behind. It was a good lesson. Consequently here I am back in the studio today, to paint a new last last piece to complete my 10 canvases.

Mary Cassatt said:

I doubt if you know the effort it is to paint! ...The trying and trying again and again and oh, the failures, when you have to begin all over again!