"My Purgatory Pile"

     All artists have piles of work that are not quite complete to satisfaction, or aren’t quite working, or should probably be painted over…or destroyed.  Well, mine has grown to a proportion that is no longer acceptable.  I am making a New Year’s resolution to cull it down….by either reworking the ones that are close to acceptable, or sanding down, and resizing the surfaces to reuse these good pieces of linen.  Some of it is just not worth the effort and should just be discarded.

      The violinist never reached completion....can't remember why!

     The nature of a pack rat, like myself, is to not throw anything away that I like, or think has any possible hope or merit.  This all started when an illustrator friend back in the Houston days took a little study out of my trash can and had it framed….brought it in a couple of weeks later and said to me….don’t throw these away.  Thanks, Bob Lapsley, for creating the saver that I am!

      Her favorite place, was exhibited once...there was little interest

        Hard to decide what to do with some of these...getting another look!

     There’s always a positive side to these things.  I go through my baskets of sketches and small studies, and on critique day at Ringling College of art and Design I have what we call artist choice.  Students vote for the most impressive body of work at each critique (they can‘t vote for their own), and the student with the most votes gets to dig into a few of the baskets of my saved studies.  They are mostly small….preliminary studies, and by accomplished artists standards not much to write home about.  The students seem to enjoy this.  I hope it creates some incentive to have their work rise to the level of a vote.

 This was never finished to my satisfaction....getting another look!
 

This is one I painted in 2005 was briefly exhibited in a gallery show!

This is one that's getting another look!

Well, here are a few that I’m giving consideration to as possible candidates for resurrection from the “Purgatory Pile”.  Again, thanks for listening to my Ramblings!….and, Happy New Year to all of you!

Hodges Soileau OPA