The Silkworm is now glazed. Order, calmness, health, perfection, pride, mastery, control, stamina, positivity, charm, confidence and a sense of superiority have been restored. It's amazing what a rollercoaster of feelings even a relatively minor painting can create. One tiny error that nobody else would notice can stab with torturous pain, but the show must go on, day after day like those people pushing the ambulance in Ice Cold in Alex. In the end this blog will not reveal all of the awful bits in The Silkworm because only I and the critics are going to care about that, and any good critic can find faults everywhere!! I will, as is customary in public, pretend that everything is just as it should be.
Who knows what Vermeer thought about the cupid he painted over in Girl Reading a Letter? Who knows Raphael's pain because of the duff hand in the Madonna del Baldacchino that probably persuaded him not to finish glazing it? Only other oil painters can ever know.
