“Be more considered.”
“Oh, just let rip!”
The two competing impulses that can result in creative dithering, if not complete paralysis.
Artists are often advised to create work that is recognizably theirs. Galleries love consistency – it makes the job of selling your work easier, apparently. Collectors also prefer it if you keep your work within a particular groove – they fell in love with one of your paintings and they’d like more of the same please. When an artist changes ‘style’ it can be disconcerting – for others. So here’s the conundrum. Artists often need to sell their work to live. At the same time, artists get bored. In fact many artists get bored really easily. It is in the nature of artists to be constantly searching, exploring new ideas and territories, experimenting with new approaches or materials. Our past work is a springboard to our new work. We follow our curiosity. The marks we make will always be the marks we make – so there will be a thread of continuity no matter what we do – but to keep the spark alive we need to keep moving forward. Completed work is in the past. It can teach us much but, unless it’s very formulaic, we cannot repeat it. Nor would we want to.
It is really tempting, when you have produced a body of work that is wildly successful, either critically, financially, or both, to feel that you need to do more of the same. After all, that’s what the galleries and collectors want, or even expect. It’s incredibly seductive. Yet, I have known artists who have painted themselves to a standstill by attempting to repeat the same work for years, despite their mounting frustration. Yes, it sells, but eventually even that is no longer strong enough motivation and they can give up making art altogether. They’d rather poke themselves in the eye with a sharp stick than pick up a paintbrush.
More often I meet artists who want to do lots of different things. Who cannot ‘stick to a style’ no matter how hard they try. Who produce oils, acrylics, watercolours, prints, drawings etc. Pieces which often do not sit comfortably next to each other. Artists are continually advised to notice what you love and let that guide you. It’s great advice. But what if you love Rachel Ruysch and Tracey Emin? What if you are inspired by some works which demonstrate meticulous planning and others that display visceral expression? Do you look for a way to combine the two or follow separate paths simultaneously? Artists are often implored to “loosen up.” But, what if your soul cries out for tightness and precision? What if you don’t feel loose today? Conversely, what if you feel the need to throw off all shackles and simply dive in to see what happens? Does giving in to both impulses from time to time mean we will never master anything but will merely skip around on the surface of a variety of media and genres?
My answer to that question is, “possibly.” Artists can explore a single subject in extreme depth by interrogating it from multiple directions, in a wide variety of media. However, it is also the case that constantly being distracted by things that are shiny and new can result in superficiality. Sometimes, to keep the creative spark alive we need to shake things up, but if we are using constant experimentation as an avoidance strategy say, out of fear of the completion phase of our work, because declaring something finished means it has reached the point of judgment (our own or that of others), then perhaps we need to re-examine why we are making art in the first place. Our mistakes often teach us more than our perfect passages, our ‘failures’ are frequently more valuable for moving our work forward than our successes. If you are serious about the mission and prepared to fail gloriously, then producing work that moves and shifts and does not sit easily together is nothing to worry about. To quote the dreadful cliche, “it’s all part of the journey.”
Just – maybe don’t put it all together on the same page on your website.
