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| Self-Portrait in red chalk (1512) |
"Art is never finished, only abandoned."
— Leonardo da Vinci
Italian Artist
1452 - 1519
Do you have paintings laying around that you have not finished? Or stories that you can't seem to finish? I have one such story. No matter how many times I have rewritten it, I am never satisfied with the ending. I put it away and and come back to it again and again. I have a long eighty page poem about the life of my mother that I have never finished.
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| Unfinished painting of St. Jerome in the Wilderness (1480) |
But I think da Vinci is driving at something even deeper. No art is ever finished. Sure we may sell a painting or publish a novel, but if we could we would go back and change it. And some artists do. I have read of writers making changes even as the novel is going to the printer.
And sometimes a writer spends a lifetime rewriting the same story. He may publish 10 novels, but each is a variation of the others. And artists may paint the same subject over and over. Each time trying to perfect what they missed before. Are there certain themes that reappear in your writing and your paintings? Are there certain personal issues that you are working out in your art?
