Horse with Birds Resting 2012

Earlier this spring I posted a blog about working in my studio http://hollyrobertsonepaintingatatime.blogspot.com/2012/04/working-spring-2012.html . This is the painting that I was working on at the time, now finished.  Most of what I do in the studio, I love. However, the last stage, adhering, I don't love.  It calls for another kind of personality than mine.  That person needs to be meticously careful and able to think things through ahead of time. She should be cautious, precise and able to delay gratification.  In other words, not me.

While holding a large, wet, curling-in-on-itself piece of paper, which needs to go down very quickly or the adhesive will dry, I suddenly can't remember which way is up and which way is down.  And the bubbles--oh, the bubbles.  If worst comes to worst I can always pull the piece back up, reprint it, recut it, and then glue it back down, but that often means not just pulling up the bad piece, but anything on top of or around it.  The photos are pieces of things and I have lots of photo folders and files(approx 24,000 at this writing).  Where did that particular tree bark come from anyway?  While fussing to get it perfect, the paper tears and I'm left with a gaping hole.  I stand while I work and my back, neck, and jaw hurt, not to mention my legs, after several hours at the salt mines.  When I'm done, I put the piece up on the wall  and I can see only errors.  My stomache churns and I walk around for several days trying to decide whether to do  it over.  Usually I don't, and later can't even find the error that was screaming at me the week before.  But the best part is that I get to teach all of this to my students, and then watch them suffer.