Sometimes my paintings take years to complete, but ususally, once I decide they’re done, they’re done. However, I finished a painting perhaps a year and a half or more ago that has been bothering me since. I posted it on this blog back then. I was happy with the painting at the time, but I left it out in the studio and after a while I started thinking it wasn’t quite exactly right. I didn’t know just what I wanted to change but it was nagging at me so I just left it out, thinking one day I’ll figure it out.

What makes a painting finished anyway? At times I think I could just keep on working on a painting indefinitely, but usually along the way everything seems to come together in a way that seems inevitable. Ah ha, that’s it, I’m finished with you, finally! (I’ve heard people say painting is relaxing. Not for me. Painting for me is often an anxious yet at times exhilarating experience, and yet I keep going back to it. I think it’s that moment of breaking through, of coming up with an image I couldn’t imagine I would ever make, that draws me in over and over).

In any case, I had this painting finished or so I thought. I called it Afternoon Tea with AJ. I was thinking of this one as a nod to one of my favourite painters, Asger Jorn. I often thought it would be great to hang out with him, drink tea and maybe play go (I read somewhere he was quite an excellent go player). Recently I was working on some other paintings in the studio when I realized I knew what I wanted to do with this painting. Now it looks like this… It’s difficult to read the changes in a photo. The reddish area has bits of glass glued to it – mosaic I suppose. As well, I’ve made some of the black areas a gloss black where before they were matte black. There. That’s better. Done.