Eagerly Anticipated Art Time - Otherwise known as the weekend!

It's a brilliant but very cold Friday - actually, since I work in a fridge, my assessment of the weather conditions is probably vastly inaccurate... And the weather forecast isn't much better. I once considered applying for work in a fish packing factory in Iceland - that's how cold my office is! Despite never having left South Africa's terra firma for the sum total of my existence, I was quite convinced that somehow, my office had done a globe trot on it's own and retained some Nordic temperature and so this would make me immune to the temperature of those fish packing factories. You know, when you have time to ponder, you think the weirdest things... Once I get my fingers unlocked from the cold, I can enjoy a good 6-7 hours of painting tonight and tomorrow. This will give me ample time to try and resolve my current "wall" painting. I'm stuck on the background. The painting is of a lady sitting doing a quilt under the light of a lantern. I wanted to convey the idea that the lamplight wasn't all that brilliant - which it's really not in deepest darkest Africa - and get stuck into my hyper 2D flattening and patterning designwork. The trouble is - I'm struggling to settle on appropriate pattern on top of the darkness and the integration of light and dark is also creating quite a headache. I'll post an image of the work tonight and if anyone out there has suggestions, feel free to offer them.
I had a discussion (somewhat heated) about what a "crit" was with someone the other day. I tried to explain that when I was studying, we'd have crits to help us resolve problems in our work and fix compositional problems. The person I was talking to believed that a valuable crit was telling someone they were painting the wrong subject in the wrong technique and that they had to change everything. He compared it to a crit of a play, where if it's really bad, the reviewer would tell the producer to quit and try something else. I suppose we're all entitled to our own opinions, but the best and most helpful crits I've ever had, are by far the ones where people have pointed out areas that I could improve on a painting rather than completely obliterate it and paint clowns 'cos that'll sell!!
Let it go, Louise, let it go.

I'm not a big Jim Carrey fan, but I read an interview in Time and he said something that really struck me. He said that after a long while of trying to do things that he thought people wanted (this is serious paraphrasing and probably hopeslessly inaccurate, but it's the gist of it), he decided to do what he was good at and what he enjoyed and he stuck to it. He then advised those reading the article that eventually somebody will come along that'll like what you're doing.