The Art of Stepping Back: How Walking Away Saved This Painting

This large canvas has lived with me for years. It sat untouched on my easel after Art on the Avenue, and before that it spent five quiet years in the dusty corners of my studio—layers of abandoned ideas stacked like geological strata. Some paintings survive these long exiles and eventually bloom. Others never do.

“Frontier” oil and copper leaf on canvas by Don Ripper 11-21-2025  

One thing I’ve learned: the most powerful tool in the studio isn’t a brush, charcoal, or even perfect light. It’s the ability to walk away.

Stepping back isn’t quitting. It’s discipline. And it may be the hardest skill an artist ever learns. When we’re too close to a painting, the eye adapts, the brain invents, and suddenly we’re reacting to expectations instead of what’s actually there. That’s when paintings go off the rails—overworked edges, muddy values, “fixes” that weren’t needed.

I decided that the orange does not play well with the purple, and lacks overall direction.

Walking away breaks that spell. Sometimes that means heading to Pork Barrel BBQ for a beer, paint still drying on my hands. With this painting, I had to go further, not just out of the studio, but away from the East Coast entirely. I found clarity in Santa Fe, New Mexico: new shapes, new colors, and blues that felt like their own atmosphere.

This painting isn’t of Santa Fe, but what I saw there changed how I approached it. Glazing King’s Blue over the orange paint cooled the orange just enough, and a small teal edge along the storm front suddenly echoed the feeling I had looking out over the Santa Fe hillside.

Maria and I outside “Meyer Gallery” in in Santa Fe 

Some of my best decisions have come not from pushing harder, but from giving the work space. Sometimes I return and realize a whole passage needs rebuilding; other times I find that the “mistake” I was ready to destroy is actually the soul of the painting.

Can I just walk away?

Artists talk about courage—the courage to start, to risk, to destroy. But there’s also courage in pausing, trusting that clarity will return, and letting the painting breathe.

Walking away isn’t retreat. It's a strategy. And it’s saved more of my paintings than any brush ever has.

Spoiler alert, I will definitely be painting an upcoming series on Sante Fe. Love that town.

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