Are you a Perfectionist or an Expressionist?

Every artist faces the same problem eventually — not just when to keep going, but when to stop before perfection starts killing the life inside the painting.

This one started during a two-day workshop in Paris. Large unstretched raw linen, acrylic, charcoal, pastel, and oil. My usual process: build the chaos first, then let the figure slowly emerge from it.

The session was intense. Fast decisions, constant demonstrations, explaining while painting, reacting to the room. And somewhere in those two days, something unexpected happened — the portrait began reminding me of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. Subtle at first, then students started noticing it too. I think unconsciously I leaned into that atmosphere. The silence. The softness. The directness of the gaze.

I rolled the canvas and brought it home. My intention was to push further — resolve the transitions, tighten the structure, bring it toward finished realism.

But every time I unrolled it, I felt resistance. Not technical. Emotional.

The more I imagined perfecting it, the more I realised I'd be destroying the very thing making it alive. The raw linen showing through. The construction lines. The aggressive marks underneath. The face emerging and dissolving at the same time. There was something about the incompleteness that felt honest.

The painting was already saying what it needed to say.

Perfection is endless — you can keep going forever. Softer edges, better transitions, more rendering, more polish. But emotion is fragile. Sometimes the most powerful stage of a painting exists precisely before it becomes over-resolved.

I could technically push this into a highly finished portrait. I know I can do that. But that stopped being the point. What interested me was preserving the rawness of the moment — letting the chaos and construction stay visible instead of hiding everything behind a clean surface.

So I left it there.

Half painting. Half sketch. Half memory. Half disappearance.

That decision took more confidence than finishing it conventionally ever would.

"Girl with a Blue Stare" is 85 cm x 75 cm, and available for purchase. Here's a link to my shop