The Usual Dilema

Okay so here is how it goes. I spend a short time painting a rich underpainting of gold and Venetian red gesso and then begin painting my new painting. I paint freely and with verve. I am relaxed and the image grows freshly. But it is the beginning of my painting. The paint is thinned and goes on wet. It doesn't cover. It doesn't have depth. It does have freshness and I'm loving every minute. Then I reach a point where I love the painting. But there is a great deal of the gesso showing through the paint. Now I have come to the usual dilemma. Should I stop? Should I call it finished?

I do really love having that transparent feeling and the layers showing through. I saw paintings by Picasso that had actual unpainted blank canvas in them. I know it can be okay to do that if he did. But I also like thick paint. However, I find if I keep painting I gradually tend to kill off the freshness, to over paint, to begin to move away from the abstraction that I love toward a closer representation of the original photograph. So today I did this in just a couple of hours and I stopped. I am not calling it finished. But I'm not doing anything else to it either. It is going to rest awhile, giving me time to get some distance and to let it be. I will return. And then I may add some paint, in just a few places, just where I want the focus to be, and leave the rest like this. What do you think. (Press "L" to look more closely.) FYI, this is 22 by 28 inches and is painted in oil paint over gesso.