Remember my most recent painting? It found its owner very quickly!

Only she wanted the orange part to be red, and I think she’s going to hang it horizontal.

She was reticent to ask me to change it, and on reflection I can see why; I’m not sure how I’d feel about asking an artist to change their painting for me! It sort of says, ‘It’s not quite good enough as you created it, but if you change it, I’ll like it enough to buy it.’ The implication being that someone else knows better than you do how to make your work.

Which, to go slightly off piste for a moment, made me think of all the reading and thinking I’ve been doing lately about unconditional love and how it means accepting someone as they are, not expecting them to change into what would be acceptable for you, which I realised is very often dressed up as what is ‘right’. I’ve lost count of the times I was angry with my ex because his behaviour was ‘unacceptable’; actually I see now that his behaviour was just him being who he is and that it was unacceptable according to what I deemed to be ok, as if I was the authority on ‘how things should be’. How very conditional my love was, then!

It’s simple but not easy. Unconditional love can feel like an unattainable ideal. But who are we to say how someone else should be, when really what we mean is how they should be so we would love them?

I am rambling. I probably shouldn’t write my blog posts late at night. 🙂 I’m not even sure any of this follows!

I learned a while back about non-attachment to paintings, and since then I find my ego is no longer involved in any part of the process, from conception to sale. So I was happy to change my painting for the buyer; it is after all a very small change in terms of work, although aesthetically I preferred the original myself. But then I am all about the orange lately.

But the painting is for her, not for me, and I actually love that it became a collaboration in the end.

What do you feel about this? Would you change a painting if someone asked you to? Would you be insulted and find it presumptuous or enjoy the challenge and the collaboration?

I think the key is whether or not you are attached to your paintings and consider them yours. I know that may sound strange but I never feel I can take the entire credit for a painting; no matter how much or how little intention or ideas or input I have, no matter how hard I worked or how long it took, no painting I produce is done without the help of Creative Source.

So ‘my’ paintings are no longer mine these days; this is not false modesty ~ I still have a part to play in getting paint onto canvas ~ and yes I love them too, because I created them; but they do not ‘belong’ to me.

I love them, I let them be what they need to be, and I let them go. Kind of like I am practicing doing with my ex.

It’s much easier with a painting.