[Previous entry: "You're going to reap just what you sow"] [Next entry: "Reluctance to share"]
04/11/2006: "Painting over your own history"
I got a request from the Greek journal Ododeiktes to publish two more of my images. I had to dig two old paintings out of storage (to take the high resolution images they need for publication) and looking at one of them (from a show I did at our city museum almost 5 years ago) I realized how much my painting has changed in the last several years and how much I dislike some of the work I did back then (though at the time I thought it kicked ass of course!).
I see how things have changed, backgrounds that were once just blocks of solid color slowly morphed into landscapes which have taken on more and more of a central theme overall. The figures have gone from very flat and stylized with heavy black outlines to more realistic colors and less distorted shapes.
Part of me wants to go back over some of them and “fix” them according to my new sensibilities…but I wonder if it’s important to leave a trail for ourselves…to keep things the way they were so we can see where we’ve been?