When I face the canvas, the battle is always the same. An overwhelming sense of not being good enough. No one could ever convince me otherwise.
And yet, that same doubt that pulls me under can also lift me higher than I ever thought possible.
It’s the one place I can’t lie to myself. There’s no escape, no way to soften the truth. Every painting dares me to prove I shouldn’t paint. It is the unavoidable challenge I’ve chosen to face anyway.
Each painting carries that tension. The exhaustion. The doubts. The emotional instability that comes with putting yourself in front of something that refuses to give you an easy answer. And then sometimes, unexpectedly there’s a shift. A moment where the resistance drops away. Not elation. Not triumph. Just the rare contentment of letting go.
That contentment doesn’t arrive with every work. Some paintings leave me restless. But I’ve learned not to wait for perfection, or to hold out for masterpieces. The real work is in showing up again and again, signing off one canvas and moving on to the next.
Because it isn’t about chasing greatness. It’s about building a body of work that bears the weight of my doubts, my stubbornness, my refusal to let the canvas decide what I can and can’t do.
That’s why I keep showing up.