New paintings, hot off the easel, and some thoughts on art and life ...

Klunkers, scrapers - call 'em what you want, we artists all make a few bad paintings. I once called mine cupboard-dwellers because I hid them away in a supply cupboard, out of sight. Another artist called his turkeys and called it Thanksgiving Day when he roasted them - burned them to ash in his outdoor firepit. That's a cathartic way to rid yourself of your bad art. Another artist told me that one of her teachers in art school gave her this piece of wisdom:  "It's not art until it's sold. Up to then it's just a storage problem." How true!

The popular movement of daily painting has the drawback that it can increase the number of turkeys. The upside is that production overall increases, so those turkeys are balanced out by good paintings, but unfortunately, some artists don't distinguish between the good stuff and the bad. It's a big mistake to publish your turkeys. I'm trying not to do that, so in my Artist's Year In The Garden project you may see some gaps, some weeks where I didn't get five paintings that were worthy of coming out of the cupboard.