Paul Gauguin- The Painter of Sunflowers 1888
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What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art?
–-Paul Gauguin
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I am in the last day of prep before I deliver my show to the West End Gallery. I am in my 25th year at this gallery where I first started publicly showing my work and this is what I believe to be my 18th solo exhibit. But even with all that experience there is always an element of doubt present when I am getting ready to deliver paintings to a gallery.
It’s just a natural state of being. At least, for me.
I used to worry that my own judgement of the work was flawed and that this would be obvious once it was hung on a wall outside my studio. My inadequacy would be on public display for all to see.
That feeling never fully goes away and on these last days of prep, this insidious doubt always creeps back in.
But time has made me adhere to the words above from Paul Gauguin, under his 1888 painting of Vincent Van Gogh.
You do what you can do. You try to do a bit better each time. You discard those things that don’t work and grow the things that do.
And you live with that.
Okay, got lots to do this morning so I am out of here. And I think I am leaving my doubts right where they are. Don’t need them today.
Redtree Times 
That’s exactly the advice Varnish John gave me re: hurricane recovery. “Start where you can start, and do what you can do. And remember to do what you can do, not what you can’t.”
Great advice. By the way, I dug out my copy of Loren Eisley’s “The Star Thrower” after your comment the other day on my tiny toads. It’s a book that has been in my to-read pile for forty years and I think this year is the year that I finally get to it, thanks to your suggestion.
Oh, you’ll love it. I wore out one copy and had to buy a second.