A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Painting is seen as picture making, the making of an art object, something that can stand on its own.
Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art habit continues.
Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.
In the end, the gesture of painting becomes almost meditative, like a ritual.
Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.
Very rarely is there any confusion as to when a painting or a song is finished. You just know when it's done.
You just don't know when you get all the paint across the canvas how it will turn out. When you step back after you've finished, you say, 'This one is not so good. This one is good.'
My struggle has been to return painting to the tangible object, which is like returning the personality to touching and feeling the world around it, to offset the tendency to vagueness and abstraction. To remind people of practical activity, to suggest the sense and not to escape from the senses.
Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.
A painting that is well composed is half finished.