For about a year now I've been struggling with a particular drawing, coming back to it time and time again, confident of having "completed" it each time, but yet returning after a week or two to tinker with it "just one more time". I'm sure I'm no exception to this obsession, for it is not uncommon for artists to never be content with their productions. However, what I've noticed is that with certain, particular pieces there's something deeper, a more profound sense of un-fulfilledness; that something grander draws one back to that very specific work of art.
What I'm speaking of, is of course Sophia, but as we all know, the inner workings of this muse are difficult to understand. She speaks to us in dream-like images, giving out suggestions not in words, but in emotions, molding the salience landscape of the recipient in subtle ways - and, sometimes, if her feeling-words go unheeded, perhaps not-so-subtle ways. But that's beside the point of this post, which was intented to examine this artistic obsession more broadly. Even if no objective metric can ever be available for subjective endeavours, I assume all artists can sense moment where the point of diminishing returns have been reached. One can tinker with a painting or a sentence unto infinity, but, most often the time-restraints of the real world appoint deadlines that are hard to ignore. Even if one was to have all the time in the world, the stereotypical artist will (them psychologically being more prone to extraversion and openess) eventually lose patience and wish to move onto something fresh. There's a subcategory, however, of the scitzhoid-autistic types who see no issue in airbrushing the tiniest of pixel in a digital painting or honing the most insignificant of commas in a novel's sentence. Wherein lies the reasonable line then; at what point one must deem a painting or a sentence "complete". As is usual with my ranty blog posts, I do not know the answer to these questions I ask of my imaginary audience. Earlier, some months ago, I wrote how isolated one is in trying to judge these invisible metrics that are outside the scope of scientific tools of measurement. All one has is Sophia, on his or her's side, and by her word shall the brush move or keyboard click.
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A.K
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