“Whatever meaning a picture has is the accumulated meaning of ten thousand brush strokes, each one being decided as it was painted.”
Robert Motherwell / Artist

Sometimes It’s Hard To Tell

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether I am actually engaged in making art, or preparing to be. I think the distinction is important.

If I go into the studio for two hours of serious art making time, and I end up tidying the studio, cleaning brushes and looking through art books for inspiration, then I can’t honestly say that I spent two hours painting. Because I didn’t.

Also, and I may be alone with this opinion, I don’t consider gessoing a canvas or taping the edges of a wood panel to be art making. I consider these important preparation activities in order to be able to paint.

Taking photographs of trees to use as reference for a painting is not art making.

Thinking about, pondering ideas, or contemplating what to do next on a painting in progress is not art making. Even those these are very important parts of the creative process.

Searching for leaves to collage onto a mixed media piece or setting up a still-life are not art making. These activities are preparing you to make art.

Painting from that still-life on that freshly gessoed canvas or painting a portrait on that wood panel with the newly taped edges is art making.

Do you see the distinction?

Preparing is preparing and art making is art making.

But sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Is sketching in a sketchbook considered art making? If the sketches are ideas for a painting, then I would consider it preparing. If the sketches are created out in nature and they are part of an overall nature themed sketchbook project, then I would consider that making art.

Even though I don’t consider gessoing a canvas as art making, applying texture paste or collage to a canvas that you will eventually be painting on is art making. I guess my opinion is that anything put on a surface that affects the final look or aesthetic layering of a painting, falls under the category of art making.

If you are genuinely preparing to make art, then pour your heart and soul into preparing. And then pour that same heart and soul into making art.

However, if preparation becomes a distraction, or avoidance, then it is not preparation any more. At this point it has probably turned into fear of wanting to try and paint your vision. And, then you’d have to look at what else is going on for you.

Don’t fool yourself.

Don’t think that just because you are in the studio flipping through art books looking for inspiration, that you are actively engaged in art making. You may be actively engaged in searching for inspiration. And if this is the case, then search with all the gusto you can.

I just want you all to be honest with yourselves.

Art making is standing at your easel, which has a canvas perched on it, you have a brush in your hand, and you are applying paint to the surface of that canvas in the pursuit of making a painting.

If you spend the day in the studio doing this, then you can honestly say you you spent the day in the studio making art.

If you spend the day in the studio gessoing canvases, then you can honestly say you spent the day in the studio preparing to make art.

I just think its important and honest to make the distinction. And to be honest with ourselves.

Best,

David