If you look at the barn images, you probably have enough information to draw an architectural rendering by now. The barn sometimes feels like a brick on my head. The partial barn images I find more interesting. When standing close to the barn, it assumes different personalities.
This weekend I read Life Work by Donald Hall (appropriate for Labor Day weekend). He writes about how easy it is to deceive one's self about one's work:
"...while I am writing at the desk...I am utterly happy, utterly unself-conscious. Then I remember--sagging suddenly, heavy as mud, black, and hopeless--all the times I have felt this way, writing poems especially but occasionally essays, when I have come later to realize that the words I wrote with such excitement were nothing, nothing, nothing at all, and my excitement (my certainty!) merely a function of blood chemistry. One disease of working alone--the way writers mostly work--is dependence on mood. Mood is no measure and flips from highest to lowest in a millisecond."
These words apply to painters too. You can't wish a painting to be good despite your best intentions. Just move on, and keep working. Maybe on the same idea.
But here is Donald Hall quoting the sculptor Henry Moore:
"The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is--it must be something you cannot possibly do!"
So if you think, maybe, you deceive yourself, be consoled if you pursue "something you cannot possibly do!"
