I am a Failed Artist.

I scrape my paintings. I admit it, and I do so often. So did John Singer Sargent (a scraping fool!), but I guess that makes him a failed artist as well. The list of other scraping artists goes on and on.

Not just for starting over, scraping the surface of a painting is also a means of controlling texture in preparation of additional layers.

I met an artist on a recent plein air excursion who expressed surprise and disappointment that I had scraped a painting back that I was unhappy with so that I could start again fresh. As if I had committed a deep sin that wounded the soul and "Spirit of Plein Air". . .Yada Yada.