Welcome Home - When is a painting actually finished?

When is a painting complete? This is a question I ponder every time I wash my brushes and clean my palette. Is this painting finished? Am I completely satisfied with the results? Is there anything more I could add to the overall composition? Often, I just decide to "leave well enough alone" and call it complete.

However, when I "finished" my latest painting called "Welcome Home," I wasn’t 100% satisfied. The more I looked at it, the more I realized it wasn’t finished. It needed color adjustments to the sand and especially to the wooden deck walkway to the beach. I had painted the wood to look like newer wood.

A quick visit to any shore or beach on PEI shows these wooden structures are weathered, lacking the golden, blonde color of new wood. They are mostly various shades of grey.

So, I loaded up my palette once more and began mixing a batch of paint with my spatula. The hue had to resemble the weathered wood I envisioned. Highlights and shadows, some wood grain, and I think I got it right this time. The final steps included retouching the sand and re-establishing the Maran Grass growing out and over the wooden walkway.

Now, I can look at this painting and feel satisfied. It was created to take its observers back to a simpler place in time. A time when getting to the beach, whether for a day or on summer vacation, always meant happy times.

Remember those peanut butter and jam sandwiches from the cooler, that always ended up containing sand in the peanut butter? The buckets and shovels that gave hours of playtime on the shoreline, building castles only to have a sibling run by and stomp through them? Sunscreen, floaties, less-than-cold drinks, burying your feet in the sand, or perhaps watching a family of Piping Plovers run by with their familiar chirp? When it’s time to leave for home or the cottage, a quick look around to make sure you’ve gathered everything. You think you had it all packed up, but somehow, that towel was overlooked and left behind. It’s okay, though. You’re on PEI, and that means someone is holding it until you return, or has placed it conveniently for you to find... on the wooden deck leading to the beach.

All this to say: "Welcome Home."