Last month, I was invited to create a variety of themed works of art to be displayed together in a public location. The theme wasn’t really one that I enjoyed, and the deadline was tight. I worked diligently, and managed to produce six or seven pieces that everyone seemed to like. When I looked at them, though, I wasn’t satisfied.

This is not the first time this has happened to me. The previous summer, I had been hard at work on a series of paintings which explored themes of architecture, and I was quite excited about the project. Somewhere along the way, though, my painting came together without me. This might seem hard to imagine, as I had created it, labored over it, brought it into the light for all to see. The truth was, though, that when I looked at this painting, I couldn’t recognize it as my own. Here, too, I had struggled, before ultimately taking the paintings down off the Wall of Completion and putting them back up on the Easel of Progress.

I had created many things, beautiful things, people told me. You’re being too picky, people said. But when I looked at these paintings and these pieces of art, something was missing. It took me several weeks to realize the piece missing was me. Yes, I had made them. Yes, they were technically proficient, but they lacked all essence of me. I had made them out of obligation, not with love, and it showed. To others, they were a fine aesthetic, but they were not my work. Not really. I set about stripping each of the paintings down, adding new base layers, slathering gesso, smearing white and orange and teal with reckless abandon. In the end, each of my paintings were not symmetrical, they were not neat with even edges, but they were mine.