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Artist Carl Dalio - one of my role models - is known for his bold, saturated color paintings in oil, watercolor, and pastel. In a film produced by Creative Catalyst Productions, I have once heard him say that to produce luminous watercolors, it is very important to clean your palette between washes & also before you start a new wash.

He went on to explain how traces of complementary colors left on the mixing surface, can produce unwieldy grays & why it is important to give your pigments some room to breathe between each other. 

Very recently - much like cleaning the palette -  we had our apartment painted. This called for meticulous planning of shifting of materials, to cover them up lest they get damaged by paint, making room for the painters to move around & cleaning the walls off the old paint.

So that the fresh coat of paint when applied, looks luminous. 

Much of my time in those preceding few days went in managing my art stuff. I had accumulated quite a bit in the past few years - a result of my careless indulgence & more importantly, a tendency to hoard - to hold on to every single bit lest it goes away. 

As artists, we often move around with a lot of baggage that we hate to part with - our style, our technique, our tools … much like that uncleaned palette carrying traces of what we did.

This tendency of holding on to all things old, tried & usually tested - I think - comes from a deep & often hidden desire to reside in our comfort zone. And it is our false sense of security that resists change - sometimes even without fully understanding its implications & thus let us remain in the rut we are.

And have we not seen enough examples of this in our everyday life? How difficult was it to draw “shapes” & not buildings, people & birds? How was it even possible for trees to be any other color than “green”? Is it at all necessary to paint with only 3 colors especially when I have just bought a new set of 12? How will the viewer understand, if I did not paint each window on that building far away?

For me, each of the above conditions represented a separate paradigm in my art career … & all of those needed to be shifted. Like cleaning the palette. Or putting a whitewash.

To remove the old & make way for the new.

Think of the most influential art persona of the 20th century - the Spanish born artist Pablo Picasso. Starting with his iconic Blue Period in 1901 - he went on to create several others like the Rose Period, African Period, Cubism, Classicism, Surrealism - each startlingly different from the other. How many times did the maestro have to clean his palette? How many times did he have to change?

As I’m writing this post, I heard the cuckoo just outside the window & as I looked out I saw how fresh, green leaves are replacing the old ones of the last winter. Sometimes change is not just recommended, but unavoidable. And mostly, welcome.

What do the members of Pink Floyd, Samuel L. Jackson, and Courteney Cox have in common with fashion icon Tom Ford and former president Thomas Jefferson? They all found their footing as students of Architecture prior to changing their career and reach success in other fields. They became the change they wanted to see around them.

While our apartment was getting painted, I lost access to my regular paper, brushes & paint. So I had to create a makeshift hand-held palette with very few colors & use a Moleskin 5”x8” pad to make watercolor sketches. I also used an Arches Rough Block that I have been keeping aside so long, being rather uncomfortable to use a rough surface.

All of these meant big changes for me, & I really wanted to resist it - initially at least.

But this sudden change provided me with rare insights into what I could have done differently - it's like observing yourself at work. For example, the rough paper helped to achieve that coveted “dry brush technique” with relative ease than a normal cold pressed surface … the watercolor sketches made in the Moleskin, made me experiment with formats & composition.

For me, It was so much like cleaning the palette. And now that I think back, whenever I have done it - changed tack or technique or tried out new things -  I usually got good results - sometimes not so obvious, sometimes a little delayed - but good nevertheless. I found that nothing actually went away, and what came back was absolutely fresh & vibrant. A promising new start filled with so many possibilities. As artists, I think, we can really be experimentative & ready to start from scratch at every failed attempt. Or just make a different one.

But only if we could clean the palette.

The small handheld palette I created 

A 5"x16" sketch in the Moleskin