Unfinished...or are they?

These are making me nuts. There are a couple that I'm pretty sure aren't finished because I'm not fond of an aspect or two, but these are living in art limbo

 This first one was created the way I was taught by my first online teacher. Ok, my only online teacher. OK, my ONLY teacher and I only took  one course last year for 6 months and another course for an even shorter time.

She swirls 2-3 chosen colors around with lots of water to cover the canvas and makes "an environment" for the muse to speak through, or the image to come through. I had NO intention for this painting other than to paint again after a long, frustrating break like this one. I chose a 12x12 canvas so that I could get it done more quickly with all the many, many layers I had been taught to paint.

This was done last August, and I saw the mirrored faces and the stream with a woman floating and/or being carried up or downstream and/or a woman existing between two worlds.

And there I stopped. There's not much paint on the canvas, but I don't want to make it heavier. I don't even want to put the other shore in because it seems to me that would narrow the place where this woman exists. I don't want to do it "wrong."

I wish I had journaled more last summer because maybe it would help me understand what I was going through at the time that made me see this image. Or maybe, this is the non-verbal image I needed at the time, and still need occasionally because despite the fact that I "didn't do this right", I'm happy with it.

So I'm declaring this Finished. I had already named it Between Two Worlds, so all that remains is to sign it.

These, however are most definitely NOT finished. Maybe. They're even smaller because I was under the impression that smaller canvases would take less time. Oh silly me! The random, or seemingly random covering of the canvas with the first layer did take less time. But the things I wanted to put on the canvases....yikes!

The picture above is how it started. You can see how small the canvases are, and my plan was to make a bigger square made up of all 9 canvases with 9 personal muses. I'm not even sure I can remember what all the 9 were anymore, but I do know that one was the muse of piano playing because I started that one.

A silly cartoon of a Buddhist nun appeared, but I didn't panic. I figured she'd change when I painted her. Maybe grow hair or something. But no. My piano muse is a shaven headed nun.

And she looks worried. She has looked worried since last summer, and I've been worried with her. And stuck. And grumpy about it. Painting this tiny makes me feel cramped, and OCD about details that I don't even know how to paint yet. Maybe this style is not my style and I should paint over her somehow, look at the 9 paintings as a whole and paint one big, broken up something-of-other.

One friend who was helping me put up shelves in the kitchen and around the corner in the studio noticed a narrow space on a corner between two shelves that she thought would be perfect for me to hang my little paintings in a vertical line. Just the way they were. She only saw 8 of them and had no idea of the cartoon nun in the drawer of my art desk.

The nun is on a meditation retreat in the drawer. Don't bother her.

So now I'm wondering if I can make them cohesive with something-or-other and hang them vertically there. But they're the "wrong color" for my kitchen which is mostly red stuff scattered around.

I'm dithering about finding another tiny, vertical space on my weird walls...or going with my original square formation,  going abstract, continuing with the "muses", or putting more layers on and get some different colors going.

Btw, when I got prepaid for a HUGE diptych during a sale at Blick last fall, the above picture is what I spent it on. This is a composite picture because it took me 3 pictures to encompass my haul. I thought it was a good idea, but what it created in me was a plenty-of-time mentality. 

Then I found my glorious new apartment and the above sketch is how I began to spend my time. Obssessively. There are many many little drawings, all drawn to scale with little colored beds and desks etc, also drawn to scale.  I moved in on Halloween, and now it's February. Do you think I'm done drawing room diagrams to figure out where stuff goes? HAH! 

The muses, you ask? I think they were for piano, art, dance, cooking, writing, theatre, and...um....I think I keep changing the next two. Perhaps I only have 7 in my life. Perhaps this whole idea of muses is no longer active. Perhaps the whole idea of "muse" is not MY idea, but one from the only painting teacher I ever had. Perhaps I don't NEED a plan, or a muse, or an intention at all. 

Maybe I should just do what my blog title says, and go play with colors.