I have been thinking about this post for a while but I have been asking myself the question – when is a painting finished? – for quite a while! It first started when I began to paint semi-professionally in about 2004 when a friend of mine asked if I would like a professional artist friend of hers to come and see my paintings and give me some advice. This was at a point when I had just put together a set of around 10 abstract oil paintings. Many of these paintings had only one coat of paint but I was happy with the finished products. The artist who saw them…