Making Space for Unfinished Work

Making space for unfinished work (and letting it stay that way)

Sketchbooks are my happy place. They’re messy, full of bad art, half-baked ideas, and trails of nonsense notes.

They’re where ideas live before they turn into anything. Or don’t. Mistakes happen, small sparks show up, and half-formed thoughts sit quietly without pressure to become more.

Some of my favourite paintings started this way - as scribbled sketches I almost forgot about. Most stay as sketches forever. And that’s fine too.

At the moment, I’ve got two unfinished large paintings hanging on my studio walls. I haven’t touched them since last year, but I like having them around. I’ll finish them eventually, maybe soon, maybe not. Either way, they belong here for now.

Lately, I’ve been trying to make more room for that kind of work. Unfinished, unpolished, and unhurried. The kind you do just because it’s interesting, not because you know exactly where it’s going.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking progress only counts when something’s finished. But some of the most important work happens when you’re wandering, not entirely sure where you’ll end up.

The Painted Post has been a good space for that too. It’s a way to share one-off pieces and studio tangents, fragments of ideas, without needing them to be part of a larger body of work.
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