Painting every day is a great way to discover strengths and weaknesses. There is always more to learn. Paintings don’t always come out like I imagine and at some point, they take on a life of their own. While painting the 90 paintings in 90 days series, this retched clam frustrated me to despair. I used a palette knife to scrape my third messy attempt off the canvas, fully intending to start over. But what appeared, the ghost of former efforts, surprisingly looked interesting. The vertical lines appeared because I scraped the paint off the canvas on a piece of corrugated cardboard. I let it dry and called it a day, one big fat happy accident.

When it came time to exhibit all 90 paintings this was the first to sell. The architect who bought it said it was the best piece in the series. Maybe he was right, but I didn’t mention it was an accident of frustration. It was original though; I never painted anything else in the same desperate style.