I had been at university for a few weeks before I produced anything that I was remotely proud of and I wasn’t really trying! I had completed a workshop where we had to mix our own grey and I still haven’t learned how to mix paint without having a large amount of paint left over!
So there I was with all this magnificent grey paint that I couldn’t bear to throw away. I had a couple of hours before I needed to go home so thought what can I do with this paint? I looked around for something simple to paint and there was my roll of masking tape on top of one of my boards, that I had painted with a background colour earlier, but damaged so had decided it wouldn’t do for a REAL painting.
So I grabbed a pallet knife and got going. I concentrated on the tones and how they related to the tones around them, not thinking of what the item actually was until the end. I kept going until I had used up most of the paint that I had left over and voila! There it was, probably the best painting I had done up until then!
Everyone who passed said they liked it, that it had something! What this? This, using-up-paint-I-couldn’t-bear-to-throw-away-on-a-scrap-piece-of-board thing? So it seems I do my best work when I don’t care about the result! I guess I learned that day that art can surprise you and you achieve far more when you’re relaxed and going with the flow! 😁
Tracy J Hughes 