Maintaining the Awe

I recently heard noted plein air painter Tim Solliday say: "Painting is a combination of physics and poetry." That's a great way to put it. Paul Cezanne said "A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. Emotion is the starting point, the beginning and the end. Craftsmanship and technique are in the middle."

I'm beginning to sense the importance of maintaining the poetry, the awe, throughout the process. I feel like it may be pretty common for painters to start out full of poetry, creating something fresh and alive with emotional energy, but somewhere in the process when we become more focused on technique, perhaps trying to push ourselves when we're also a little tired/hungry, it's easy to loose hold of our emotion/poetry for the piece, and the work loses its luster. Ever had that happen to you?

In other art forms, artists are able to "undo" muddled work and get back to the fresh part, but it's not that easy in painting... I'm going to try and be more conscious of this in the future; to step back and take my own emotional pulse now and then, as I'm working, and recharge as needed.