Returning to Unfinished Artwork
A Reflection On Creative Process
The creative process is not linear. It’s not always something that happens in a set and planned way. For me, art happens in random, sporadic bursts of motivation and inspiration, as someone who likes order and planning, which can be very difficult. My art and creative process can’t always be what I would like them to be. My work is very emotional and cathartic, and that is not something that can always be planned. I have been working on a creative practice that allows for regular creative activities, but also allows for the unpredictable nature of my process, and most importantly, creative play.
Most people, including myself, might expect the creation of a work of art to follow a set path. For a painting, one might imagine the artist being inspired by something, sketching out ideas, planning the work, starting with the initial blocking out of the image on the canvas, continuing to paint the artwork until it’s completed, and applying the finishing varnish once completed. That’s not always how it works for me.
Often, when I try to make myself follow all the steps in order, I get stuck or lose motivation to finish the work. I partially blame formal art education for creating the idea of a defined, proper creative process to make ‘good’ work. I was a bit rebellious to those methods in school, because it just felt wrong to try to force something so free and magical as creativity into a formal method of operations. I still feel like I’m trying to deprogram myself and remove judgment from my creative process that crept in through all my formal training.
Lately, I’ve been working on removing my expectations and focusing on what my creative process needs to be in order to complete artworks. Allowing for more play, more spontaneity, more freedom to just let the process happen naturally.
This seashell painting is a good example. I started it over 20 years ago, but then it sat on the proverbial and literal shelf until just recently. I was just not happy with it. I didn’t like the original background, but felt stuck moving forward. I had tried some digital tests for new backgrounds several years prior, but it still just sat on the shelf waiting. I finally put it back on the easel recently and painted this rich purple background. It was what I had been envisioning for a while, but finally seeing it was so gratifying. It made me question what took so long to get it done, but in that question, I realized the problem was my expectations.
I realized that there is no right or wrong path to make art. A work can wait years and still be just as valuable and relevant. A work can stay unfinished for a year or even forever. My expectations had been ‘productive studio artist’ when my reality is ‘emotional creative who uses art to express herself’. That reality is who I am. The value of my work is in the process and expression. If a finished piece later becomes a work I share and sell, that is separate from the reasons I created it. I was tying too much of the ‘art business’ into the ‘art process’, and that was creating a huge block in the form of unrealistic expectations for my process.
Moving forward, I’m working on releasing expectations and allowing my creative expression to be what it wants and needs to be. I understand now that there is nothing wrong with pieces sitting on the shelf until they are needed again, and having some works that never get finished. Each piece has served its purpose in my creative process, and if one day they make their way out of my studio, it would be a bonus.
