I have learnt the hard way that there reaches a point in the life of any painting that the internal contradictions are greater than the paintings ability to recover.  When this point is reached then there is only one thing for it – gesso the canvas and start again.  I have reached that point with Mr Grey and I know the reason for this.  The painting was started over two years ago and I hadn’t really paid too much attention to the details of the of the image I was using.  It had sat there waiting to be finished and this is what I started to do this week.  It wasn’t until a day into the painting that I realised that I had made a big mistake and no matter what I did it made the painting worse.  In short the internal contradictions became too great.

So there is nothing left to do but to get the gesso out and start again.  It is sad but another lesson learnt.  Many more hours to go me thinks.