Climbing the hill

By some small miracle, I ran across this quote from Cecilia Beaux the other day:
"In every picture I've painted there came a time when it was impossible to continue. There was a hill I couldn't climb. It's then when that pressure bears down on the solar plexus, that you must keep on!"

I had reached that point of pressure on the solar plexus, and I was about ready to call it quits (which I really hate doing, by the way. I am NOT a quitter). But thank you so very much, Cecilia, for giving me the nudge I needed to go on. I'm going to finish this painting, and while it might not match the masterpiece I had initially created in my head, I will try my very hardest to make it a cohesive, sensical whole. I still have a long way to go, but maybe the next time I post here it will be nearly finished. I'm going to give myself a break (and a pat on the back) for being courageous enough to try and then see it through.

Perhaps it's a bad idea to be so ambitious in my subject matter (and to paint people with whom I am so familiar with to start!), but I do have all these dreams of beautiful figures and portraits on canvas. I'm gonna do it. And as Hugh Laurie says, "It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any."

And because I'm a little obsessed with Cecilia Beaux's paintings at the moment (make room, Sargent ;), here are a few stunning and inspiring examples: