You might’ve noticed we’ve been a little quiet on the blog lately...that's because at the MTS Studio, we’ve been busy working!
Between the re-launch of Play With Pigments, upcoming exhibitions, commissions, three boutiques that my work is now represented at, and more, it’s been a busy summer! In the midst of all of this, my assistants and I have been pulling together canvases and preparing for new collections before we head into art fair season. As I was rummaging through my "paintings-to-be-completed" section of the studio, I stopped myself when I saw a specific painting.
I remembered exactly where I had left off on it. In my mind, it wasn't finished—not even close. I had envisioned adding more layers, color, and refining certain areas before I would ever consider calling it complete. But as I stood there looking at it, months removed from the last brushstroke, I realized something unexpected: I actually liked it exactly as it was. The painting had an openness and immediacy that I hadn't noticed while I was working on it. The brushstrokes still felt fresh, the colors had room to breathe, and there was an energy that I worried might disappear if I continued painting simply because that had been the original plan. With this specific painting, there is an emptiness that I'm really enjoying from the space of not filling in all of the details. Before, I saw that emptiness as something to be filled--but I'm actually glad I never "completed" it.
It made me realize how often we become attached to our own expectations. When I first begin a painting, I usually have some sense of where I want it to go, but paintings have a funny way of becoming their own thing. They evolve through decisions and discoveries that couldn't have been predicted from the first sketch. Somewhere along the way, this painting stopped asking for more paint. The only person insisting it needed to change was me, simply because I had already decided months earlier that it wasn't finished.
As artists, we're often taught perseverance—to keep pushing, refining, and improving our work. Those are valuable lessons, and many paintings truly do benefit from spending more time with them. But I think there's another skill that's just as important and much harder to develop: knowing when to stop. Sometimes continuing to work isn't actually improving the piece; it's simply satisfying our own expectation that more effort should equal a better result. Learning to recognize when a painting has already become what it needs to be takes a different kind of discipline. It requires stepping back long enough to see the work for what it is, rather than for what we originally imagined it would become.
That once-"unfinished" painting is no longer sitting in the stack waiting for another layer of paint. Instead, it's waiting for a home Looking at it now, I'm grateful that enough time had passed for me to see it with fresh eyes. If I had picked it up the next day, I probably would've painted right over the very qualities that I now love about it. It's funny how time changes things, and how I change right with it.
Yours truly,
Makara