What the Fog Taught Me About Failure and Endurance

I want to talk to you a little about failure, mistakes, and discovery.

There does not seem to be much room in the world for failure anymore. Most people try to avoid being wrong and distance themselves from mistakes.

But as an artist I have learned that failure is one of the most important parts of the process.

You sometimes get upset when I question you or when you feel like you are wrong. But if you notice, I rarely tell you that you are wrong. Instead I try to get you to question what you believe.

To be right assumes we already have the answer.

In art, the questions are always more valuable.

Questions lead us down new paths. They lead us toward discovery.

If we want answers today we can simply ask Google. But the mental journey of trying to answer a question ourselves can take us to places we never expected.

While I was finishing the orange paintings and thinking about cycles in nature, the fog started rolling in across the hills.

Around that time I found myself asking a lot of questions about life.

About the cycles of life.

About whether any of it is even important.

The truth is that the answer might not matter.

But the questions are fascinating.

How did we succeed when so many forms of life before us did not?

How is it that Earth appears to be one of the only places in the known universe where life has managed to thrive?

Are these cycles something we see in other areas of life?

Do we express these cycles ourselves?

Is making art just another cycle?

Growth.
Failure.
Decay.
Rebirth.
And growth again.

It often feels that way.

And that led me to another question.

How do we represent those ideas in paint?

Around the same time I was asking these questions, the fog kept rolling in thicker each morning.

Maybe it was coincidence.

Or maybe not.

Sometimes we begin to see the things we are already looking for.

The fog spoke to me while I was working on the orange paintings.

Not as a symbol of the cycle itself, but as something required for the cycle to continue.

Endurance.

The fog felt like the weight that life must push through.

In the mornings we would drive through it together, talking about life while everything around us disappeared into the mist.

Some days the drive would begin clear, and then suddenly we would see rivers of fog pouring over the hills and spilling down into the valleys, wrapping the landscape in silence.

Because I was already thinking about cycles and endurance, I think I was finally able to hear what the fog was trying to say to me.

I know that sounds strange.

Fog does not talk.

But if we ask the right questions, the world has a way of answering.

So I started painting the fog.

The first painting took a strange turn and became something like a portal into another world.

It was not really a “Phil Vance” sort of painting.

I do not hate it, but I do not love it either.

As a painting it may feel like a failure.

But as a question, it worked.

It helped me understand atmosphere better. I learned to glaze paint more carefully. I learned how subtle shifts in color temperature can give fog depth.

And best of all, it made me ask even more questions.

How does nature endure?

And how does humanity endure?

Nature seems to endure through growth.

Human beings seem to endure differently.

Sometimes we overwhelm. Sometimes we conquer. Sometimes we adapt.

We have cycles too.

When I was growing up we talked a lot about recycling and protecting the earth.

Now it sometimes feels like we would rather abandon the planet entirely.

That seems strange to me.

But it led to another painting.

This time it was a telephone pole disappearing into the fog.

I tried painting the fog almost entirely in white. White on white. Using subtle textures and shifts in temperature to create depth.

In that painting, I was thinking about human endurance.

About how we persist even when things feel uncertain.

The painting is not perfect.

But that is not really the point.

The point is that the questions keep coming.

Maybe one day I will return to those fog paintings and explore them further. Perhaps trees disappearing into fog beside telephone poles. Nature and humanity enduring side by side.

The Symbolism of Fog

Fog has appeared in art and storytelling for centuries. It is often used as a symbol of uncertainty, transition, or the unknown.

Because fog hides what lies ahead, it can represent moments in life when the path forward is unclear. Writers and painters have used fog to suggest mystery, reflection, or the feeling of standing between one stage of life and another.

For me the fog began to represent endurance. Not the cycle itself, but the weight that life must push through for the cycle to continue.

Sometimes we cannot see very far ahead. But life continues anyway.

And maybe that is the point.

But questions do not always need answers right away.

Sometimes the question itself is enough.

And the fog paintings left me with one question that still lingers.

Why do we endure?

I think I know my answer.

But that is a story for another time.

For now, maybe just sit with the question for a while.