“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

To paint paintings for joy was an act of defiance against your mother, and so you have punished yourself in several ways; by being overly concerned with their quality, insisting upon perfection, and by not making strong efforts to sell them or to work for recognition in that field.

To search for perfection within your art is good. The drive is good. But this is something different. Each painting has a spontaneous reality that you have often refused to acknowledge. (Pause.) Carried to extremes this could smother the spontaneous spark that is the heart of each painting.

What you want is not a perfection which is rigid, but the ever-balancing action of spontaneous motion, a balance precariously maintained for a moment through ever-approaching and receding imbalances that result in objects.

The perfection that you seek is not ever a finished, but a becoming quality. The technical ability gives a poised point through which these realities can emerge. The technique that is yours and is excellent should be the point of departure that sends the spontaneous action into new reality, and not a rigid mold to contain it.