How Did You Do This?
How did you do this?
Almost always, when someone is viewing a work of art, some iteration of the question “How did you do this?” or “What was your inspiration?” is asked. For the artist, in a gallery night or public setting, the answer to these questions almost has to be specific to satisfy the person asking: “I used popsicle sticks, I made a stencil, I mixed a zillion different shades of pink, I was in a mood, I was in inspired by this, that, and the other, etc.”. Those responses may do the trick in a simple conversation but don’t completely answer the question: “How did you do this and why?”.
My answers to the above questions have always been dreadful. I have never felt competent at explaining what I do, how I do it, or why I do it. Truly the discomfort boils down to the fact that I had absolutely no idea what, why, or how. Making art, any kind of art, can be wholeheartedly intuitive. Of course, there can be blueprints, sketches, and even detailed plans, but so much of art-making is visceral; this is difficult to break down and explain.
When I started to work on my first big painting (8’ X 6’), I was particularly tuned in to “How do you do this?” and learned a lot about art-making and the intricacies of intuition. Somewhere between completely starting over after a couple of months working on this painting and finally settling into my new direction with excitement, I had a sincere realization that fundamentally changed my answer to “How do you do this?”. I realized that making art is simply making decisions. One after another, constantly, with no breaks or coasting, just decisions. Of course, some decisions are made so quickly, or intuitively that they don’t even feel like decisions, but they most certainly are. With this realization, I began recording every decision I made in a notebook. This offered such clarity and momentum.
When I started recording my decisions, I had just flipped my painting from vertical to horizontal and completely disregarded a fairly complete composition that took me months to make. I stood far back, stared at my reoriented painting, and thought: “now what?”. My main problem, I thought, was that there was not enough depth. My shapes and colors were great! Yet, it felt flat, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Well, I thought, if it looks like I have one flat layer going on, I’d better add a lot more layers to change that. That was a slow, big decision.
In my spiral notebook, I wrote:
“adding layers-cannot be attached to any specifically- I need a lot of them.”
I looked at my colors spread out on my studio floor. The next line:
“I'm going to use white on big brush-big lines.”
I did that. The next line:
“needs purple. The bronze color is annoying me. Adding purple over it-”.
This went on and on and on. I tried my best to pause and write down every decision I made. Of course I missed stuff. In the zone, I would make a handful of decisions within decisions that I either didn’t have time to write down or, at the moment, didn’t consider the actions measurable. But they totally were. Every single teeny-tiny decision influences the direction and momentum of all future decisions and, therefore, what the final product will be. You could break down every piece of art ever made into a trillion zillion decisions made by the artist. This realization revolutionized my understanding of what it means to make art and how on earth you make it.
The understanding that every artwork is a collection of specific decisions realizes the complexities of art-making while simultaneously establishing the simplistic, intuitive process that art-making just is. This idea streamlines the “How do you do this?” conversation. With all of this in mind, the answer to that question is so simple: I made a ton of tiny decisions, one after another, with the final decision being that the project is finished. These decisions are everything. From the more obvious (orientation of canvas/material, medium used, colors mixed) to the very minute (the width and placement of every tiny or huge mark made). Although anybody can make a series of decisions until they are satisfied with the final product, you are the only person in the world that will make those specific decisions in that particular order. That is such a special thing. Simplified: the art you make is you because you make the art. I have found such relief in that sentiment.
When you are in the zone of art-making, in the heat of decision after decision, you will occasionally find yourself at a crossroads. The decision you need to make, or the answer to the decision you need to make, is, for whatever reason, unclear. “Something isn’t right.” you may say. The fogginess of the problem makes it difficult to imagine a solution. Or, maybe you get lost in the current of decisions, lose your footing a bit, and don’t even consider that perhaps you should have stopped making decisions a couple of decisions ago. There are always moments like this when you’re making art. The sweet spot is where the person making the art is tuned in and interacting with every decision consciously and subconsciously. Every little line, smudge, color change, restart, and slight reorientation builds on the next ( always with a healthy mix of challenges and frustrations) until the final decision is made, you stand back, and it’s complete. There’s a total sense of satisfaction, completion, contentment- it’s done, you’re done.
It’s hard to describe what it feels like when you finish working on a piece of art because the work is so obviously realized; there’s no more decisions to be made. Of course, as much as the artist feels a sensation when that happens, the person observing the artwork feels something too. I don’t know if those sensations are the same. The feeling I get when I finish a painting is like a combination of snapping the cap back onto a marker and the absolute triumph of winning a race. For someone outside of that process to look at an artwork that is truly realized, at least for me, feels settled, like crossing the final “t” in a letter you wrote. However, I think both the artist and the observer experience a feeling of ‘just rightness’; despite the emotions or thoughts the finished artwork evokes in you, any sense that there was any other option, another way this art could look or be, that a different version could exist absolutely never ever crosses your mind.
There are a lot of art makers in the world, and every last one of us has a bucket load of art that is almost what I described above but not quite. It takes experience, patience, time, imagination, learning, creative solutions to creative problems, and the perfect coding of decisions to nail it. I think we sometimes take for granted the art that accomplishes this, especially when it comes to ‘abstract’ art. Occasionally, I chat with someone who does not appreciate either a specific genre of art or a particular artwork. This seems particularly true for more abstract art. They might say: “I don’t get it.” or “I could do that.” or “What is it?”. I don’t think these are stupid things to say, but I think these people are missing the magic.
When you are in a space (gallery, museum, studio, etc.) surrounded by perfectly realized art, you can dislike anything or everything, of course. But still, there’s room for a nod to the intelligent sequencing of decisions that materialized the work of art. I think it’s important to understand that there’s pretty much no way you, as the observer, would have organically ever made that very particular piece of art that is so entirely finished someone may actually sit and stare at it for a while. That a uniquely specific, individualized series of decisions, seriously as unique as the DNA of the person who made them, is what creates masterpieces exactly unlike any other is so special.
So, all that said, it’s been hard for me to commit to an ‘artist statement’ or answer the hard-hitting questions “what do you paint?”, “how do you make this?”, “what’s your inspiration?” because it’s a downright loaded question. In the past, I have made something up to satisfy the person asking when, in reality, my answer is: I’m not a theme or inspiration gal, I work on intuition, and I try to see every project through to the very last decision using any material or medium that will help get me there.
