My small watercolours usually take just a few hours to complete, sometimes spread over two days. Creating my larger watercolours, however, is an entirely different process—one that can take up to two weeks from beginning to end. Although I am not painting continuously during that time, I enter a kind of creative trance in which, from the initial spark of inspiration to the final brushstroke, the work is constantly on my mind and refuses to let go.

Along the way I make countless decisions. Where do I go from here? How should I proceed? Which colours should I use? Should I change direction after all? I do not arrive at these answers through careful planning; I simply know—or rather, I experience—them in the moment, although it needs patience. This process of choosing continues until the painting is finished.

For me, “finished” does not mean “perfect,” whether by some universal standard or by an artistic one. A painting is finished when I experience the unmistakable inner certainty that it is complete—that I have achieved what I set out to do. This sense of completion arises from the same intuitive knowing that has guided and driven me throughout the entire painting process.

Ordinarily, it is the final work—the completed watercolour—that takes centre stage and receives our attention. For me, however, the intermediate stages of the painting process are every bit as fascinating. In the following photographic sequence, I show earlier phases of several older large watercolours; phases surrounded by a whole world of decisions that remain invisible when one sees only the finished painting. If we wish to know nature, art, objects, and people more fully, we must look back to the stages they have long since passed through.

Menno Aardewijn (18-7-2026)