Sometimes it really is satisfying to take an older work and improve it. My acrylic paintings of a decade ago were almost all larger than could fit in the back seat of a large car. One by one they get dismantled and rolled up, but not this one.  It just needed some attention. I’d painted the bay as a shipping port in order to help establish the scale of the scene but it wasn’t necessary. I’ve commenced painting that out. Gone are the docks and ships and storage facilities. So far so good.

My strategy was undermined by competing interests. Whereas often I like to paint the outlines of the person then fill in as if it were a big coloring book, I realized only after painting in the sketch outline that such a design denies the sense of space that I wanted. By then it was too late. I’d painted the body of water first and with the gradient control that acrylics don’t have for me, I wasn’t inclined to redo the water. So I painted her fully covering the lines. That left her shaped funny. Tiny hands, big arms, and an exaggerated upper torso.

Nine years later, I’m revisiting the painting to remedy the issues that vexed me before.

The trick is to retain the look and feel of the time when it was created in the process.

54″ X 52″