Every painting session begins with scraping down, removing old paint from my palette so I can start fresh, blank. I
love this ritual. I like seeing the sharp razor taking strips of paint from the glass. I like discarding the obsolete remnants from yesterday. When I approach a blank canvas, I feel a quickening in my body, from the excitement and fear of beginning again. Beginning again.
Scraping down my palette is the less terrifying practice of beginning again. It offers the freedom to be any kind of painter I want, for that day alone. I can be blue one day, and oranges the next. I can be thin as a wash or thick as paste.
I wonder what rituals other artists have, and whether they derive as much pleasure as I do with these practices.
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