Power of One
Painting today comes with a constant pressure to diversify. New styles, new mediums, new platforms, new ideas, there is always something else to try, something else to keep up with. It’s easy to mistake movement for progress, to believe that shifting directions or adding more to your practice will lead to clarity. Often, it does the opposite. In painting, depth rarely comes from accumulation; it comes from staying with the same problems long enough for them to reveal something new.
Focus in painting is not about restriction, but about attention. Jumping between approaches can feel productive, yet it often prevents sustained engagement with the fundamental questions of the work: how color behaves, how space is constructed, how an image holds together. These things only become clear through repetition and close looking. Painters who develop a distinct voice usually do so by returning to the same concerns over time, allowing small adjustments and slow refinements to build into something coherent.
Committing to a focused practice also means accepting frustration as part of the process. There are long stretches where the work stalls, where paintings fail, where improvement feels negligible. The temptation is to abandon the direction entirely, assuming the problem lies in the choice rather than in the necessary difficulty of learning. But progress in painting is rarely dramatic. It often happens quietly, through accumulated failures, half-resolved canvases, and persistent revision. Staying with the work through these moments builds both skill and judgment.
In an environment where visibility and novelty are often rewarded, it can feel risky to slow down and commit to a single path. Yet painting does not respond well to shortcuts. A focused practice allows ideas to deepen and technical understanding to compound. Over time, this sustained attention creates work that feels considered rather than reactive. Focus becomes less about ambition and more about responsibility, to the process, to the medium, and to the questions the painter has chosen to take seriously.
Focus in painting is not about restriction, but about attention. Jumping between approaches can feel productive, yet it often prevents sustained engagement with the fundamental questions of the work: how color behaves, how space is constructed, how an image holds together. These things only become clear through repetition and close looking. Painters who develop a distinct voice usually do so by returning to the same concerns over time, allowing small adjustments and slow refinements to build into something coherent.
Committing to a focused practice also means accepting frustration as part of the process. There are long stretches where the work stalls, where paintings fail, where improvement feels negligible. The temptation is to abandon the direction entirely, assuming the problem lies in the choice rather than in the necessary difficulty of learning. But progress in painting is rarely dramatic. It often happens quietly, through accumulated failures, half-resolved canvases, and persistent revision. Staying with the work through these moments builds both skill and judgment.
In an environment where visibility and novelty are often rewarded, it can feel risky to slow down and commit to a single path. Yet painting does not respond well to shortcuts. A focused practice allows ideas to deepen and technical understanding to compound. Over time, this sustained attention creates work that feels considered rather than reactive. Focus becomes less about ambition and more about responsibility, to the process, to the medium, and to the questions the painter has chosen to take seriously.
The Christopher Mudgett archive collection is the only one in the world to present the artist’s up-to-date painted, sculpted, engraved and illustrated œuvre and a precise record—through sketches, studies, drafts, notebooks, photos, books, films and documents—of the creative process.
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