You may know I’ve never really identified with what might be deemed a Real Artist by generally accepted standards {qualifications, exhibitions, recognition, regular sales etc}.
I have written about how I feel about ‘being an artist’ before, also about the whole ‘real artist’ thing here.
I’ve been thinking about artistic identity again lately, although it’s now more from curiosity than any desire to ‘fit in’ somehow or be ‘successful’. {Why yes, I do like inverted commas.}
Something struck me recently as I was reading an artist’s statement on their website:
My art has no why. It has no story, no guiding principle, no concept I try to express or solve through the making of it.
I have no official artist’s statement, because I have nothing to state – in words – about my art. And yet I’ve never seen an artist who doesn’t have a story behind their work.
Here’s what I feel about it:
Outside of any short term experiments I might be doing, my art is simply an expression, and thus doesn’t fit into any specific category. My paintings have mostly felt like they are not altogether my creations. That’s why they come out sometimes very different from each other.
I realise that most artists would say there’s a higher power at work, that the art is a co-creation process. And yes that’s true for me too. But a story, a neat package in which to tie up the why of my art has always eluded me.
I have wondered why I didn’t want to explore a particular topic, theme or style over and over as other artists seem to, why each painting seemed to be complete in itself as a reflection of whatever I wanted to ‘say’ at that time. Repeating felt utterly pointless; the expression had been expressed – what more was there to say?
I could certainly make something up; I could say something erudite about transience, about colour, or my {genuine} interest in energy and the unseen. I could say something about personal beliefs or feelings that provoke the creation of the paintings.
What’s weird is it wouldn’t all be lies, it just wouldn’t be the truth.
The truth is, as far as I can make out at this point, that I make art because I make art.
I don’t do it to discover, to demonstrate, to narrate or to attempt to explain anything. It is simply an expression of something that wants to come out, wordlessly, without explanation.
Perhaps then the story of my art is pure expression. {Or the purest I can bring through.} Perhaps this is just the simple difference between an artist who paints for a living and an artist who does it for other reasons.
Sometimes I find nothing wants to come out for a long time. Sometimes something wants to come out very fast in its completed state. Sometimes what wants to come out has nothing to do with the things that wanted to come out before.
One thing’s for sure, this MO does not work with schedules, planning, daily practice, consistency, bodies of work or expectations.
It seems odd to me that I never see artists talking about this; is it a well known secret that art doesn’t always have a story?
Do some artists craft one around what they’re doing so that they will have something coherent to say about their work?
Do they think about how to create art that expresses a topic that’s interesting to them? ie. Is their art premeditated in a way that mine is not?
Surely there are other artists out there who don’t feel their work has or needs any kind of tidy explanation or message?
Perhaps none of us do, deep down, and it’s just a requirement for a career artist. I don’t believe one is better than the other obviously; I am simply interested in what goes on behind the scenes.
So I’m very curious: what is it like for you? Does your work have a guiding principle or set of principles? Do you explore different ideas through your art, building consistent bodies of work around particular themes as they interest you? Or do you relate to what I’m saying about this seemingly other way to do it, which is to just do it when it happens, without a story? Please do share your own experience of this in the comments! I’m most intrigued.
Here’s what I think your work is “about” (and yes, I too apparently love inverted commas!):
Your art is a light hearted yet deeply meaningful expression of your true self. An ever-changing reflection of the unique lens through which you view the world. Your art is truly “l’art pour l’art”. The best kind.
It needs no explaining 🙂
Ah I love that! Thanks M! I don’t know if you consciously or subconsciously saw my sidebar, but what you said almost exactly mirrors it!
It was conscious my dear friend. I was kind of making the point that you HAVE actually clearly defined the whys and wherefores of your art-making processes very beautifully!
Ah, right! Tee hee – that would have been quite something!
oh T… i love this post. i see myself in your words, and so agree with Malini… your art is “l’art pour l’art”. The best kind indeed. Thanks for putting into words what I’ve been feeling for a long time. 🙂 xx
So glad it rings true for you! I did wonder when I hit publish if I’d missed something obvious. 😉
this is such a great post!!! I always feel like I am supposed to have a story but it is just what comes out of me at the time!!! I just love the process of creating! Thank you for this post x
I’m so glad this post spoke to you Jess! It’s been really interesting {and affirming} to see that this is much more of a thing than I thought when I pressed publish. And yes, the process of creating is where so much of the joy is – so much more important than being able to say something clever about it. 🙂
thank you so much for this post. I always think I should follow a theme or always work in the same way as many of the textile artists I see do but somehow I just do whatever inspires me at the moment and it changes as the mood takes me. I may never get really good at any discipline as I don’t keep practising enough in one area but I enjoy my art and the variety.
I’m so glad it was reassuring for you – I must admit I’ve been surprised at how many of us do feel like this! I guess we’re just very good at keeping in touch with our self-expression, however it changes. 🙂
Tara, thank you for your honesty. I am not at the stage where I consider myself to be an ‘artist’. I prefer to see myself as a work in progress. Your recent posts make me realize that questioning oneself is a normal and needed process in order to move forward. You make me see that I need to be more patient and more forgiving of myself and just enjoy the present moment in my art without worrying about labels.
Louise I’m always so happy to hear that something I’ve said has proved encouraging or reassuring – it’s worth the occasional discomfort of telling the truth! I honestly don’t think of myself as ‘an artist’, but not because of perceived {un}worthiness, simply because I don’t find any labels offer the kind of breathing room I’m after. 😉 Looking at your drawings I see the art {and artist} in you, but of course it’s how you feel best expresses you and what you do that’s most important. Thank you for sharing your honest feelings here too. 🙂
This is something I thought about a lot, since my self taught way of creating art seems to be quite different from what established artists are doing.
I also have an aversion to conceptual art that isn’t aesthetically pleasing (to me) and that looks like the person spent way more time thinking through the artist statement than creating the piece itself.
I’m the inspiration follower, and for this reason I face similar “issues” as you: a wild diversity in medium and themes, periods of intense creation followed by months of inactivity… Which results in not being able to create a coherent body of work.
This doesn’t mean my art doesn’t have a story – I feel it does. But I’m not crafting the story on purpose beforehand. I envision what I want to paint, paint it, and only think about the implications during or after I’m done with the work.
Now I will say that exploring a theme has been interesting. Both the Sketchbook Project in 2013 and my Month of Fairies last year were a fun exploration, and I know I wouldn’t come up with some of the works if I hadn’t allowed myself the time and in essence forced myself to produce 30 drawings in 30 days… But it’s not something I’d want to do on a regular basis.
Ah I wonder if that’s a factor – the difference between being self taught and ‘going through the system’ of art school and they way they teach people to make and think about art… Perhaps being self taught allows for less restraint in following disparate interests. Like you I did a 90 or so day project last year {?}, but I wouldn’t be doing that very often! Thanks for sharing your thoughts Nela, always lovely to ‘see’ you!
Hi Tara,
Thank you for expressing so much of how I feel about making art. Having been through ‘the system’ I have always struggled to say/write something about my work and now you’re saying I don’t need to! Hurray!! Liberation! I don’t have to validate my creative expression.
I went to an exhibition recently of a ‘successful’ (yes I love inverted commas too) young woman/artist with all the writing/explanations etc, even a book about her work, and I came out thinking ‘so what’ and ‘boring’! That approach seems to limit creativity and keep it safe. Having said that I did write about my paintings for an exhibition last year, just saying what had been going on for me at the time of making them and people really liked it, made it easier for them to get into them, and certainly sparked some interesting discussions.
Hi Tessa – thank you for sharing as someone who has been through the system. I’m certainly always interested in, and really more focused on, the options beyond what’s usually done, and it’s good to hear from a place I’m not that familiar with. It’s interesting to me that you can still be trained and find it hard to express what your work is about – suggests that it’s more common than it might seem. I like the sound of the approach you took at your exhibition very much; it sounds like a snapshot of where and who you were at that time rather than a defining {confining} statement. Perhaps it’s semantics but it does feel better to me to be more ‘real’ about it.
I find it very hard to talk about my art. To me, a piece could mean this, that or something else, and it feels as though if i explain it one way, the other stuff is lost. I don’t think when i make art that i love. When i think too much, i generally don’t like the finished product as much, so far. Thanks for your articles, they make me feel more comfortable with how i am as an artist.
Hi Liz, I agree about the difference between art made with thought, and art that just seems to come through and create itself. It’s easy to get caught in a mental/thinky trap, trying to find or create meaning. I’m so glad you’ve found some reassurance here. 🙂
Hi Tara. I love your thought provoking posts and I currently have a blog where I include “Every painting has a story “ series to serve to discuss the inspiration around the painting. I paint using different styles mediums and methods and always thought it’s because I m still new at doing this artist thing so just haven’t developed that yet. I’m beginning to understand that I just love experimenting and trying new things. I do think every painting has a story because even in those paintings where you just needed to have your creativity pour out onto your paper or canvas, you had emotions and feelings that you in that somehow were expressed. The painting is a reflection of your mental state, your place in life and what felt right each moment of brush stroke. That is the story. I think for abstract painting its all about feeling and the desire to create. Each day is a story, each moment is a story, each painting is a story. It’s just a little harder to express than a realistic painting story. Keep writing your amazing blogs. They are so thought provoking and encouraging.
Thank you for the lovely feedback Betty! What a great idea for a painting series. You make a good point about all paintings having a story, just by nature of having been created, and everything involved in that.
Hi Tara, I too am a self taught artist who loves the freedom of the intuitive process, I wake feeling the colour and it goes from there, I never really know what will emerge until I’m well into it and by then I am lost in the process having almost disappeared in time.
I can paint to a theme and plan a piece for an exhibition and have been fortunate to have sold and also won the odd award but for me it’s that getting lost in time I find the most rewarding.
I don’t have a problem writing the story of each piece, as it turns out it’s usually something which is going on in my life at the moment, often something I’ve not really thought through until it comes out in my art and hits me! For me that is when my soul is in my work and has true feeling for me.
As someone stated here previously, I go through periods of creating feverishly then nothing, I’m inspired by so much and try so many different forms and mediums that I don’t seem to have a set style, in saying that I wonder if that’s not a bad thing as so many I see with definite styles seem to get stuck in a rut of mass production… As you can see I’m confused about my art and the direction I ‘want to’ or ‘should’ go?
Hi Christine – I think this is a very common quandary! I have found that the ‘all or nothing’ way of working and the fear of getting stuck in a rut of sameness while simultaneously worrying that your art is all over the place are not things to label as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’. It’s actually totally natural for creative minds to be curious and to resist structure and repetition {even though there can be greater freedom with some boundaries!}. Once I started to embrace my natural erratic ways, they became both less of a struggle and easier to evolve into something more in line with what I was looking to build. I don’t have any definitive answers, but I do think this acceptance piece is powerful. And I don’t believe ‘should’ is ever the way to go; if we’re not inspired it’ll show in the work. Trust that your truest work will come through and keep going! Developing your artist voice is not an overnight thing – in fact I’d go so far as to say it’s an ever evolving lifetime endeavour. Which is awesome. 🙂 It WILL come together – I think it just takes a lot longer than most of us realise or would choose in this instant world!