A Catch-23 on Twelve ©

In the song “You Can’t Win” performed by the late musical artist Michael Jackson in the 1978 film “The Wiz,” the Scarecrow character sings about a catch-22 paradox while being mocked and tormented by a murder of crows:

[Verse 1]     “You can’t win, you can’t break even,

And you can’t get out of the game”

A catch-22 paradox, coined from Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch-22” describes a situation in which two conditions make success impossible: you cannot accomplish “Action A” without first completing “Action B,” yet you cannot complete “Action B” until “Action A” has already been done. Common examples include needing good credit to secure a loan, while needing a loan because you lack good credit; or needing experience to get a job in a new field, while being unable to gain experience without first getting hired.

The numbers 22 and 23 both carry symbolic meanings in religion, mathematics, and popular culture. Biblically, 22 is often associated with completeness, revelation, and divine order. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and in numerology, 22 is regarded as a “Master Number.”

By contrast, 23 is often linked with creativity, adaptability, and positive transformation. In mathematics, 23 is considered a “happy number” because repeatedly squaring and summing its digits leads to the number 1. Across various traditions and cultural interpretations, 23 has also been associated with luck, charisma, and creative energy.

So, borrowing from the phrase “catch-22,” I began thinking about what I call a “catch-23” — not merely a paradox of limitation, but a paradox of calling, creativity, and endurance. And here is my “Action A” for this paradox.

Earlier this year I completed three 8 by 12-foot acrylic on canvas paintings for my church’s Drama Ministry in just 4 weeks’ time (from start to finish). Each painting presented a full scene that depicts a biblical event in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. I stretched each canvas over custom-built wooden frames made from 2-by-4-inch studs, primed the surfaces with acrylic gesso, painted each full-scale scene in acrylic, applied protective varnish, and signed every finished work. In short, it was an enormous undertaking compressed into a remarkably brief period of time.

Garden at Gethsemani (one of the three 8 by 12-foot paintings)

As for my “Action B”, seven years ago, following the completion of a composition painting entitled “Dancing to the Nines” that depicts three images of my granddaughter practicing her dancing exercises within a colorful setting (see image below), I began work on a surrealistic companion oil on canvas painting featuring her older brother. Unlike the church commissions, this work measured only 3-by-3 feet.

That companion painting — entitled Twenty-threes on Twelve — depicts three images of my grandson: as a pre-teen football player, as a high school athlete, and later as a college player. Each football jersey incorporates the number 23. The figures appear above a three-dimensional conical dodecagon platform with missing components — a structure first developed through mathematical calculations and scale modeling before I ever touched brush to canvas (see below). As strange as it may sound, mathematics is often how I bring visual ideas into reality.

After completing the geometric calculations for the platform, I transferred those concepts onto the canvas as the compositional foundation for the painting. The next step was to incorporate the three figures of my grandson into the completed design. Yet, as of this writing, the painting remains unfinished.

And that raises the paradox.

If I could complete three monumental 8-by-12-foot paintings in only four weeks, why have I struggled for more than seven years to complete a single 3-by-3-foot canvas?

The same question applies to two other unfinished works: Thirty Doors, now entering its ninth year in progress, and Summer Silhouettes, which has remained unfinished for five years. Perhaps the answer lies at the center of my “catch-23.”

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My paintings are typically built in layers. Some contain as few as three coats of paint, while others require as many as eight. When working with oil-based paints, certain layers can require up to six weeks to dry completely before the next layer can be applied. So even if each painting layer takes just three hours to complete, the critical path to its completion is always its paint drying time. As a result, even a simple three-layer oil painting may contain a built-in drying cycle lasting anywhere from eight to eighteen weeks.

To expedite the creation process, the drying time can be cut in half by placing the painting in direct sunlight. However paintings produced during the winter months often require the full drying duration due to the decreased availability of direct sunlight.

Now, the three paintings created for my church’s Drama Ministry are entirely different in both medium and schedule. Those works were executed in acrylic paint, which dries much more rapidly than oil paint — often within two to six hours. Each painting required just three or four layers, and each layer could usually be completed within one to three days. Under those conditions, a single 8-by-12-foot painting could realistically be completed within a week.

The Great Commission (another of the three 8 by 12-foot paintings)

By contrast, the unfinished painting Twenty-threes on Twelve has already required five layers of oil paint, with each layer taking between four and ten days to complete. I estimate that two or three additional layers are still needed before the painting can be considered finished. So even allowing for the worst-case drying scenario, that painting could theoretically have been completed within a year.

So why has it remained unfinished for more than seven years?

While the church paintings demanded discipline, labor, and deadline-driven execution, deeply personal works ask for something else entirely. Personal works require emotional resolution, spiritual clarity, and a willingness to confront ideas that cannot be hurried. In those works, completion is not determined by physical size, technical skill, or available time. Completion depends upon reaching something internally that refuses to arrive on command.

So, the simple answer is this: when I create paintings for others, there is always a delivery date. A schedule exists. Decisions are made in service to completion. The work moves forward because it must. But when I paint for myself, there is no deadline beyond the one I silently impose. I work when time permits, when inspiration returns, or when life temporarily loosens its grip on other responsibilities.

And that may be the true nature of a catch-23: the realization that the most meaningful creations often resist completion precisely because they continue to reveal something unfinished within the creator himself.

The paintings that mean the most are often the easiest to postpone because they belong entirely to us. There is no committee waiting, no audience expecting delivery, no ministry counting on completion. Only the artist remains — alone with the unfinished canvas and the quiet promise to return someday.

Which is why the real driving force behind completing my unfinished paintings is not simply artistic ambition, but legacy.

I just want to complete each new painting while I still can.