David Roth has no rules for when a painting is finished. As he mainly uses oil paint which needs time to dry, he usually works on several different canvases at the same time over a period of several months. Then he puts them away, to let them breathe and dry. After he left them alone for a while he looks at them again with a fresh eye, to decide what to do.
Sometimes a work indeed turns out to be finished, more often it needs more work or a new start. For Roth it is like being in love: you work on a piece and you feel like you absolutely love it. But at some point you need to take a step back, let it rest for a while, to see if it was not just a crush, but whether you are actually in love.
For some pieces David Roth also applies acrylic to his canvasses, which he puts outside of his studio to expose it to rain or hail, resulting in beautiful surface transformations. Adding subsequently applications of oil paint, these works became part of Roth's contemporary interest to utilise nature as co-creator of his work.