The Danae is completed

I decided that applying more paint, tightening up the color and composition, worrying over the over all balance, and gilding the lily any more were not things I needed to do. I think a painting invites a perpetual involvement, a good deal of the art is knowing when to say "enough." In art you learn that even the best works go out into the world displaying their flaws. It is a conceit to believe that something can be so well done as to be flawless. Flaws are in many ways what adds life. Or I should say "so called" flaws. Flaws lead us into areas of investigation we'd never think of. I have learned over the years not to be afraid of my flaws but to love them. We can always be better, but never perfect. Perfection (and a more dubious word has never been spawned: consider how we interpret "be ye perfect" in the sermon on the mount what would rather be translated as "be mature" or "grow up into the description of God as loving as described in the preceding verses" - how much mischief is caused by that idea of perfection, that holiness is somehow being afraid of the trembling of a tea cup and having spit shined shoes) is a deadness, from what I've observed. I've never seen something with the label of perfect that didn't seem lacking in life.
Of course I use the word "perfect" sloppily. As do most people. It's just about as meaningless as the word "great" or "greatest". Is it really perfect that I've found a parking spot in front of the store? Or else I use the word ironically. What about when something is perfectly flawed?
Nature is perfectly flawed. No straight lines exist in it. No entire circles. The earth: not a perfect sphere but oblate and set at an angle. Nature is all asymmetry: as are we. Yet it is a perfect world: just the right distance from the sun and made of just the right compounds of chemicals at the right temperature. We don't know how else to define life, but that we expect otherworldly life to conform to some observations of ours projected onto them. How flawed. But it makes perfect sense.
Years ago, when I was in high school, and suffering artist's block, afraid to spoil the perfection of a page, second guessing by second guessing, I broke through when I determined that I would call nothing a mistake. I took that damned internal editing function on and turned it off. I now say that art is a choreographing of mistakes and accidents. I work at making all my mistakes work together. I let my mistakes live.