One of the really nice things about acrylic paint is that it can coat anything. You can paint a thousand different pictures on a canvas, over and over, one on top of the other very easily in acrylics. And this makes acrylic paint a very easy thing to hide behind. The only thing to give away the fact that you've covered up another picture is that an unusual texture begins to build up in the paint. At a first glance, everything on the painting is okay. It looks normal. But once you get closer and if you run your hand over the canvas, it becomes clear that there's something underneath because it's so rough and overly textured.
Steve hated to paint dark things, but he felt the pull to, like they were images he needed to get out of his mind. They directed his brush when he told them not to, they painted themselves as he cringed. And then, when he was done, Steve cleaned his brushes and mixed himself new paint and started over, coating the entire canvas in white and pretending that nothing had ever happened.