In the image above, you will find two internal squares identified with the letter “A.” As you may have anticipated, both of these “A” squares have the same value. They are identical. However, the square surrounded by a light area seems darker and vice versa. Hence, an area with one value is influenced by the value of what’s around it. So if someone says that the mountain is dark, implicitly one is suggesting a relationship: darker than what? Values are always relationships.¹

So here’s the technical requirement that I’m getting at: at each moment of the process a painting ought to have correct value and color relationships. It ought to be complete at any stage. The image below captures two moments in the painting process of a particular painting. As it first emerges out of a white  canvas (image on the left), the darks may be relatively light (high key). Further along (image on right) but still an hour or more before I stopped, I have dropped the value of the darks down a little more but then I drop the values of the middles down a little, too: the relationship between darks and middles is fixed (always!). The same is true for color; if I develop the reds more richly, so must I develop the greens, grays, and other colors so that color relationships remain constant (even if now the painting is in a lower key).  The painting is always a whole, always complete, regardless of where I choose to stop.

Suggesting that the concept “finished” is a category mistake when it comes to painting is not a semantics issue. It goes to the art of how we approach painting and what it is that we are doing as we are painting. I am suggesting that we ought to think of a painting (and making art generally) less as a manufactured product and more of something alive that grows and moves in unexpected directions, not unlike jazz improvisation or even like the growth of a child.