Milk and Honey Day 18: Why I Work on Multiple Paintings at Once

I currently have eight paintings in progress.

Three finished pieces are leaning against one wall, while the rest are scattered around my studio in various stages of becoming. Some are waiting for paint to dry. Some need another acrylic layer. Some are ready for oils. One is still being difficult.

People sometimes ask why I don't just finish one painting before starting another.

The short answer is that painting doesn't really work that way.

For starters, there's a practical side to it. Paint needs time to dry: if I only worked on one painting at a time, I'd spend a surprising amount of time waiting around for something to cure before I could move forward and get very little done.

Working on multiple pieces also saves materials. If I've mixed a beautiful color, opened a jar of texture paste, or squeezed out oil paint onto my palette, it makes sense to use it across several paintings while it's available instead of watching it dry out. The same setup and cleanup time can serve multiple pieces at once.

But the real reason goes deeper than efficiency.

Paintings need space.

If I stare at the same canvas for too long, I stop seeing it clearly. Every artist knows this feeling. You become so close to the work that you lose perspective. Walking away and spending time with another painting lets me come back with fresh eyes and usually a much better understanding of what needs to happen next.

I tend to overwork areas, get stuck and start forcing things when I run into a problem. Putting it to the side and letting it sit allow me time to work it out in my head, or just come back to it with fresh eyes. And often times, I”m stuck because I either need to let something dry or need to switch materials or layers.

Working on several paintings at once also creates a natural cohesion across a collection.

Colors repeat. Textures reappear. Marks echo from one piece to another. The same materials show up in different ways. A decision made in one painting often influences another without me consciously planning it.

That kind of visual conversation is difficult to force.

It happens naturally when the paintings are developing together.

And then there's the biggest reason of all.

Ideas don't get used up. They multiply.

One of the biggest misconceptions about creativity is that inspiration is a limited resource. People worry they'll run out of ideas if they make too much work.

In my experience, the opposite is true.

The more I show up creatively, the more ideas seem to arrive. One painting suggests another. A color combination sparks a new direction. A composition raises a question I want to answer differently. What begins as a single concept slowly branches into multiple possibilities.

If I only worked on one painting at a time, I would follow a single path until it ended.

But when I work on several pieces at once, the ideas have room to evolve.

One painting becomes three.

Three become eight.

The collection starts having a conversation with itself.

Sometimes the solution to a difficult painting appears while I'm working on a completely different one. Sometimes a new piece emerges because another painting showed me something I hadn't considered before.

That's exactly what's happening with Milk and Honey.

A few weeks ago this collection existed entirely in my head. Now it's spread across my studio walls, drying racks, easel, and every available flat surface.

It's a little chaotic.

But somewhere in that chaos, the paintings are helping create each other.

And honestly, that's one of my favorite parts of the process.