The Mermaid’s Hands 24″x36″ Acrylic

I haven’t been working on much for the last few weeks.  I don’t know why I go through these feast or famine phases, just seems to be how I work.  I began this painting a couple of years ago – and then I painted over it with black gesso and used a wet paper towel to remove some of the gesso and began painting it again.  I keep going back to it trying to get it right – but I reach a point and then I quit because I know it isn’t there yet and I don’t know what to do next.  When it began there was a full figure, but it looked clumsy so gessoed it out.  The hands keep coming back, so I think I am supposed to keep them.  This is not the final version, just an updated one, even if it were the final version there is a lot of clean up to finish with the background and all the edges, the hands are definitely not finished.  I have three paintings in this same state and I really wish I could fix them and be finished!  Sometimes I just don’t know where to go with it next, I spend a lot of time staring and waiting for the answers or the inspiration.

Summer is going by so quickly!  I notice there is a different slant of light now (doesn’t Emily Dickinson mention something in a poem about “the slant of light”)?  Summer isn’t over yet, but definitely moving away from us.  Our nights have been much cooler. I wonder if  the sweet peas will bloom.  I may have planted them too late!  (My favorite summer flower).  They are waist-high, but no where ready to burst forth.  Our growing season is very short here.