Starting Over

November 23, 2025


Every artist knows the quiet tremor that arrives after finishing a work, the swell of accomplishment, the brief, luminous feeling of having touched something true. For a moment you hover above the world, suspended in the satisfaction of completion, convinced that perhaps this time you captured precisely what you meant to say. And then, inevitably, the high fades, and you turn to face the blank canvas once more. It sits there, unmarked and indifferent, as if it has no memory of what you’ve just achieved. Some say you are only as good as your last painting; the weight of that idea can settle heavily on your shoulders, making each new beginning feel like an exam you must pass again and again.

 But within that pressure lies a secret possibility, because the blankness is not a void, it is an invitation. The empty surface is where renewal begins, where the artist is free to forget the rules of the last piece, to loosen the grip of expectation, to chase a different rhythm, a different light, a different truth. Starting over is not a step backward; it is a return to the original spark that led you to create at all.

 It is the moment when curiosity becomes stronger than fear, when the unknown becomes more compelling than the familiar. Each fresh beginning contains the potential to discover something that wasn’t possible before, something that requires the vulnerability of not knowing and the courage of beginning regardless.

 To start over is to accept that the artist is always in motion, always becoming. It is to recognize that identity is formed not only by the works we complete, but by the willingness to approach the next blank surface with openness, humility, and a renewed sense of purpose.

 In each new beginning, we have the rare chance to meet ourselves again, changed, deepened, expanded and to follow that new version into whatever the next work demands. Embrace the blank canvas. It is not the end of what came before, but the doorway to everything that has yet to be imagined.