Hidden Underneath.

lessons from the messy middle

There is a painting that lives only on my camera roll, in my head, and buried underneath a finished painting that I think about often. The elusive layering of just the right colors, variety of shapes, composed in a way that makes me proud to call myself an artist. This work is me working at my best. Freely, intuitively, playing with color, shape and scale with no rules, no pressure, no desired outcome. This is the work of the middle.

Somewhere between the base layers and the finished piece is the period where play and experimentation come freely. No critical eye judging if the painting is done. No chatty inner voice staring at a blank canvas worried about making the first marks. Here in the middle, there is just the work. The layering of paint, the stopping to see how things are evolving, the slow rhythm of just allowing. This is my favorite part. The part where I can’t quite see the ending and am instead just enjoying the ride.

In this particular painting, I didn’t know the in-between would be the best part.

This happens often. As a painter, I’m always looking for the finished painting, moving towards some imagined destination. This in-between layer was a small part of a bigger work. In isolation, it was beautiful - the best thing I’d made in months. In the entire painting, it competed and made no sense. So away it went. Covered and changed, but still living in my head years later.

Here’s what the messy middle of painting continues to teach me, and it’s what keeps me showing up to the studio week after week :

The mess is not the problem to solve before the real work starts. The mess is the real work.

We are so trained to skip to the good part. To want the first attempt to be the final one, the rough draft to arrive already polished. Years of art directing has reinforced this in my core. In painting you simply cannot fake this - you can not art direct your way through a painting. The underlayers exist whether you planned them or not and they do the important work of adding texture, layer, story to the finished piece. They’re the process doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, finding its way in the dark, one layer at a time. The same is true for most things worth making. The messy middle of a relationship, a career, a creative practice... that’s not the waiting room. That’s the studio.

Calling something a rough draft changes everything.

When a layer doesn’t have to be the last one, something loosens. The brush moves differently. You take risks you’d never take if this were the painting that counted. You try the color that might be wrong, the shape that might be too much. And sometimes, sometimes those are the best decisions you make. The rough draft gives you permission to be brave because nothing is at stake yet. I think about this constantly outside the studio too. The friendship still forming. The work still becoming. The version of yourself not yet finished. What if you let it all be a rough draft for a little longer? What opens up when you stop asking it to be done?

Sometimes you paint over the best layer without knowing it.

This is the one that still stings a little. I have a photograph and a memory and a finished painting that is good but not quite what I loved in the in-between. What I’ve made peace with is that I couldn’t have known that small section would live in my head for years to come. You can only see the middle clearly once you’re past it. And the trying to get back there, the months of chasing something I made accidentally... that searching made me better too. It’s made me go slower. Pause more often to look at my work (or my life) and appreciate exactly where it sits today. The things we learn in the process have a way of showing us something the finished work never could.

The only way to the painting is through the painting.

Not through thinking about it. Not through planning it or waiting for the right mood or the right light or the right level of inspiration. You have to put down the layer that won’t work to find the one that will. Every finished thing you’ve ever made has a few buried almost-right versions holding it up from underneath. That’s not a flaw in the process. That is the process.

So whatever you’re making right now... whatever layer you’re in the middle of, whatever rough draft you’re tempted to abandon because it doesn’t look yet like what you imagined... stay in it a little longer. You might be in the best part and not know it yet.

And if you paint over it anyway? Take a photo first.

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If this landed with you, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who would get it. A friend who makes things, a designer you admire, someone who has a complicated relationship with their own blank canvas. Word of mouth is everything for a solo artist and I do not take it for granted.

And if you have been thinking about bringing a painting into your home or a project you are working on, my studio is open for commissions. I would love to make something with you. Reach me at jill@colorkindstudio.com and we can start there.

So glad you are here. xx