Is a painting ever done?

Probably when someone buys it. That's the honest answer, and the one I give on Instagram when people ask. The longer answer is that there are three ways a painting of mine gets finished, and only one of them is me deciding it's good.

It stops when the paint stops

Most of the black-on-white work is made in one go, on the floor, with the whole arm. Love B was made fast — you can read the speed of every mark, and there's pencil writing still showing through underneath because I never went back. No. 034 is 8ft of wall made the same way. When the paint runs out of the throw, the painting is done, and going back in would only slow it down. Those are the easy ones.

It stops when the wrong part wins

Beautiful Disaster is blue, black and white thrown down in layers and left where they landed. I let that one go wrong until the wrong part became the painting, and that's the name. It's a different kind of finished: not a plan completed but a mistake accepted. Some of the best pieces in the catalogue got there that way, and I've stopped pretending otherwise.

It stops when I come back years later

A View Inside / Hiding Behind Color has two titles because it had two lives. I started it in 2022 as deep crimson in bands, put it aside, and came back to it in 2024 to pull the gold and white through. You can still find the first painting under the second one if you look. It's the piece I've gone over more times than anything else, which is why it costs a little more, and why I'd argue it's the most finished thing I own.

And sometimes it doesn't

There was a crimson piece that hung in the hanging room for a while. It never settled, and in the end I painted over it — the photo is still on The studio, labelled "since painted over". No. 035 went the same way: painted over, number retired, record kept. A painting that never settles isn't unfinished; it's a canvas I'm going to use again.

So: done when the paint stops, done when the accident wins, done when I've come back enough times. Or done when it leaves — and once it's on your wall, it's yours to decide.

About the author. Charles Black is a self-taught painter working in acrylic on canvas from a two-room studio at the back of a warehouse in Queens, New York, and the founder of ABB Collective. He has been posting the work as @abstractbyblack since 2022 and has placed paintings in bars, offices and private homes around New York. Questions about anything here: charles.s.black@gmail.com.