Revamping an old series-Pastels find new light

I have a collection of poetry that goes with a pivotal moment in my life that I had no idea was happening until after. I almost fell longways on a very large timber rattlesnake. I was lost on a path and suddenly experienced what could have been my last day on earth.

What I didn't know that day is that just a few weeks later I would have a heart attack and have to have a quad-bipass, I can only imagine getting bit by a rattlesnake could have been a dangerous addendum to a blocked heart.

The poetry I wrote was dark and many of the pastels, all on black paper, were very dark as well. The water was black against a cloudy sky. That group of pastels soon turned into a flood of pictures and paintings moved around and shoved into corners of a house in renovation and a body in disrepair.

This series that turned into the most recent series has turned into a new way of looking at older pastels. To see where light faded, to find the answers that would complete a work with time, acquired skills and a reimagining the original concept.

Another very interesting approach to some old oil paintings that never felt like they hit the mark-Oil Pastel. It is like using black charcoal in a pastel, a way of defining certain aspects of the scene to lead the viewers eye.

I have talked with other artists about the idea that you are painting with an inspired roadmap to a finished work. The problem is that sometimes the road map fades and you are left as if you were painting someone else's painting. All the vision and the inspiration is gone and you are left pushing paint and colors around.

One must allow creativity to take the creator where they need to go and that is often uncomfortable due to a lack of skill, vision or both. An artist's eye changes, as does the writer's perspective, some things you are wanting to create must find themselves on their own. You are sometimes just a steward of an idea, this is where inspiration has been awoken and you create that which didn't seem clear or real before.

How do you get clarity? Rediscover an image? Do you redo old paintings or works of writing?