leonardo learning: Listen to your painting

Here is the latest update on my American Shaman painting. Something was not working for me in the painting. The figure of my friend in front of the buffalo was competing with the buffalo. It was an issue that couldn't be solved with color or tone or value etc. Then I began to listen to the painting and I realized that the solution the painting wanted was for the figure to be a ghost, a silhouette, a quantum phantom in time space.  This painting already had a "heightened" reality to it. When you learn to shut up and listen you can make progress as an artist or a shaman..this is called artistic maturity...it takes about 10,000 paintings to get there--start painting.