The Courage to Start Over: Erasure as a Creative Act

In art, as in life, the idea of starting over often feels like failure. A false line. A bad decision. A misstep. Something to be hidden or corrected, preferably without anyone noticing. But what if we reframe erasure, not as a sign of weakness or regret, but as a deliberate, even powerful creative act? What if starting over is not the undoing of progress but an essential part of the process itself?

I've written about my re:discovery of charcoal and how the messiness of the medium is its strength. How the ability of charcoal rub off, often on your clothes, also leads to infinite chances for correction. I am sharing a few paintings in today's article that did not survive my creative process, but thrived in its transformation.    

Never be afraid to make radical changes.

There’s something deeply human in that. We all revise ourselves over time, sometimes gently, sometimes dramatically. We erase habits, identities, relationships, even whole ways of seeing the world. In art, this same instinct to adjust, to try again, becomes tangible. You rub out a gesture and try another. You lighten a tone, shift a horizon line, remove a figure that no longer serves the composition. Each time, you trust that the work is leading you somewhere better—even if the path looks like chaos in the moment.

Perfectly fine painting on the left became dramatic and more impactful on the right.

Starting over requires courage. It means admitting something isn’t working. That’s not easy, especially when you’ve invested time and effort. There's an attachment that builds whether it's to a drawing, a painting, or an idea. We want to make it work, even when it's clear that it won't. But the ability to let go, to surrender the need for control or immediate success, is where real creativity lives. Erasure clears the way for discovery.

I create and destroy trees in my paintings all the time.  Sometimes less is more. 

There are practical implications, too. Some of the most dynamic compositions come from layering, adjusting, building up and then scraping back down. Texture, contrast, tension—they’re often born from this back-and-forth dance of making and unmaking. When everything is too clean, too certain, the work risks becoming sterile. But a piece that has been through struggle,visibly so, feels alive. It breathes.

Midway through the painting on the left I decided to reduce this Lubec landscape to its essence.

Of course, erasure doesn’t always mean wiping the slate clean. Sometimes, it’s subtle. A softening. A reconsideration. In drawing, it can mean pulling light from shadow with the tip of a kneaded eraser, revealing form through subtraction. In painting, it might be scraping back a layer to let another color peek through. In writing, it’s cutting a sentence to let the paragraph breathe. These small acts of removal are just as meaningful as bold revisions. They signal attention, care, and a willingness to listen to the work.

We don’t always celebrate this enough in the art world. There’s often pressure to appear confident, decisive, sure of every move. But the truth is, much of the best art comes from uncertainty—those moments when the artist chooses to trust intuition over inertia. Starting over is not a detour. It’s the path.

In the end, erasure is not destruction. It’s refinement. It’s adaptation. It’s hope! Every time we start over, we affirm the belief that something stronger, clearer, more resonant can emerge. And in that act, we grow, not just as artists, but as people. (Hopefully)

So erase boldly. Start over without shame. Let the marks you remove be part of the story you tell.

SEE ALSO: Time Keeps Moving, and So Should Your Picture Framing and Art Choices