I've been working on different ways to explore the repetitive strokes, and it is leading me in two directions: work that is more minimal, and an urge to return to my gestural work. In my opinion, my gestural work is much stronger for the more disciplined kind of painting I've been doing. Perhaps it is simply a matter of how many times your brush hits the surface and what you learn from that. Thinking about this reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour concept in "Outliers". I certainly have far to go, but I am indebted to my mentor, who wisely charged me to return with 20-30 paintings for each of our meetings, without going into any long explanation as to why. And it has shown me that many days will feel like nothing is happening (or lots of not so pretty things are happening), but showing up and sticking my brush into the paint will eventually lead me to somewhere.
