Metamorphoses by John Gerstner | Acrylic on Canvas, 18 x 24 in.
It amazes me how much progress in a painting depends on your willingness to paint over what you did earlier.
What once felt right starts to look off.
Too safe. Too forced. Not quite alive.
You may have spent hours, days, even weeks getting there.
And still, something in you knows it’s not working.
So you stop.
You paint over it.
You start again.
It’s not wasted time. You needed that version to see what it wasn’t.
But it’s no longer worth continuing down that path.
Painting teaches this without mercy:
you don’t move forward by protecting what you’ve done.
You move forward by letting it go.