Delacroix Said It

"I'm always having excellent ideas, but instead of working on them while they are still fresh in my imagination, I keep telling myself that I will do them later on - but when? Then I forget about them or, worse still, can no longer see anything interesting in ideas that seemed certain to inspire me. The trouble is, that with a roving and impressionable mind like mine, one idea brings another out of my head quicker than the changing wind alters the direction of a windmill's sails." - Eugine Delacroix, journal entry April 11, 1824 -

Going through my notebook today, while looking for Velazquez's color palette, I ran into this Delacroix quote and it made me think "don't I know this too well!" I constantly find myself getting ideas for paintings or being inspired by things I see in day to day, but, just like Delacroix, ideas get lost in time if I don't take action. And even when I do take action, they don't get completed in a timely manner. That is my problem now, I have various unfinished pieces in my studio and can't get myself to work on them more until I can say it's finished. Instead I get "inspired" by another thing and yet again another painting gets started. I have a lot of things running through my mind, specially after coming back from a trip to Madrid and a two day visit to the Prado can awaken dreams, inspiration, and a lot of self criticism. My head is still spinning from all the breathtaking works of art I saw, and more ideas as to where to take my work in the future keep running through. It's nice to know that one the world's greatest artist felt the same way.