Don’t Think About Making Art, Just Get it Done

“Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art” – Andy Warhol

Old plum tree – collage and mixed media

As I write, I’m socially distancing from the piece of collage I’ve been working on this week and wondering how close to completion it is and how best to escort it to its final destination. My eyes roam across my new creation, trying to decide how I feel about it and asking myself, where is it still underdeveloped and whether I can take the stabilisers off and let it stand alone? Have we (the piece of art and I), arrived?

I know that at this point in the creative process, some reflection time is needed and plenty of Earl Grey (in a pot, of course). I’ve been with this piece for the past three days, on and off. During that time I’ve found, torn up, positioned and glued down 400 paper scraps and probably found, torn up, positioned and then discarded 8 times that number, in my search for the next ‘right piece’.

I started with one solitary idea, to create a garden collage. I decided to set the scene by splashing some acrylic paint across my board. I ended up with areas of vibrant colour: shades of greens, from sassy, baby-leaf green to a somber, shady-shrub tone, one streak of uncompromising red and a dash of blue.

Then, I propped up my two reference points for ongoing inspiration: a drawing from my sketch book of my old plum tree and a picture from a magazine, which simply caught my fancy.

Next, I held in mind the three elements that were none negotiable for me and that would definitely appear in the picture: a plum tree, a red flint wall and a bunch of daisies. The rest would be up for grabs, depending completely on what paper scraps I found along the way.

I’m realising that having some kind of limited remit is important – it gives me an anchor hold, but at the same time allows me to drift with the tide. Also, having some guiding sketches, that I’ve made for myself (however briefly done), feels essential. It acts almost as a statement of intent, as if to show I have skin in the game, as I get started.

And that’s as far as it goes. From then on, I leave the development of the piece in the lap of the gods and intuition. Quite frankly, I can’t control what I find (I’m like a beach comber or a scavenger at a car boot sale). I go with the flow and make it up as I go along, depending on what I find to play with.

This sounds a bit like life itself – having yourself a few key markers and inspirational sign posts, then just getting started and being prepared to adjust, remix and possibly re-route as you go along. Once we have set a vision or life direction, big or small, there will be no hope of reaching that horizon from the safety of an arm chair. We have to strike out, step by step, or one paper scrap at a time!

Imagination is fed and watered while taking the pixie-steps that move us forwards. It’s by following the crumb-trail that emerges from a thousand small actions, that we proceed through the maze of life.

It seems to me that, all of life and living, is a creative act and keeping the door of our creative self WIDE OPEN, is crucial. Creativity keeps us all pushing at our own self-imposed boundaries of what we think we’re capable of doing, it challenges us to dare to go out on a limb, take risks, re-invent ourselves and even disappoint others to be true to ourselves.

To keep my own door of imagination and possibility wide open, I need to stay connected to those who truly inspire me, by hanging out with people who call me out and challenge me to become a bigger version of myself and learn to ‘deepen the mystery’, as Francis Bacon said.

So, am i finished? Are the stabilisers coming off? Well, as Scottish artist Paul Gardner once said, ‘a painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places’. And this seems like an interesting place!