I Wish You Wouldn't Care More Often

"I Wish You Wouldn't Care More Often" 20" x 16" oil on canvas. 2014.

Every Sunday night, my portrait painting group gets together. We've been doing this for over a year now (See August 2013 post). I generally have just been painting fairly traditional portraits each month as the model poses for 3-4 weeks for a few hours at each session. I haven't really viewed the nights as anything more than just "practicing" and also having fun with other artists.

Well, naturally, I ran out of canvas pad paper and was running late to our last month's session. So, I just grabbed an old painting that didn't turn out and begun painting over it. I have done that before (see Sept 2012 post) with really fun and surprising results, but had sort of abandoned it when I needed to get a serious body of work finished.

Since this group is just about having fun. I simply painted over the old painting only using a palette knife. Needless to say, my new "style" was surprising for the other artists. My friend came up and almost gasped and then laughingly said "WHAT is going on HERE?" I told her I am just going to have fun now because I really just don't care.

Her reply was "I wish you wouldn't care more often". Seemed like an appropriate title to me!