Process vs Meaning

David Bowie once said in an interview that a lot of artists are happier to explain their process rather than the meaning of their work. He goes on to mention how a lot of artists title their works after they create it, which is a dead giveaway of this observation. Personally, I have so much to say on this topic in regard to my own process of creating art. I hope in my paragraphs below to dissect what this means to me, an artist, in a digestible format for an art admirer, collector, or fellow artists alike.

Process

The process of making art is different for everyone. For myself, inspiration either forms as an interesting color palette, or a loose vision of what I’d like to create. In my younger years, I found myself overthinking the final product before I even brought a speck of paint to the canvas. This expectation set early on led to frustration, disappointment, and burnout. I’m not saying those feelings never resurface now, but I’ve found that keeping visions loose in the early stage and thinking intuitively through the process has created some of my best works to date. Perspective is so important through all stages of art.

A fun fact about me is I have horrible eye sight. I come from a long line of nearsighted lunatics, and have only met two people with worse vision than myself (one of them is my own father). My contact lenses would be the one thing I’d save from a burning building if given the opportunity (sexy choice, I know). So anyway, back to my point— without my contact lenses, my vision is blurry. In the beginning stages of art, I’ve also tried to adopt the same blurriness, and slowly sharpen the details as the process continues. For me, this works.

For myself, the process of art is therapeutic. I often find my mind roaming freely as I focus on the task at hand of painting. I often find myself shifting back and forth between thoughts of “what color do I mix with this to get the color I need?” and “what experiences have shaped me to be the person I am today?” Viewing life through an introspective lense is a blessing and a curse— and probably the reason I’m an artist in the first place. After many hours of this back and forth, an artwork emerges… sometimes. 😉

Meaning

To me, the meaning of my artwork is often found along the process of creating. I never start an artwork with a title in mind— usually the title emerges from my internal monologue as I paint. Occasionally my special interests that I pick up and put down like a child with a new toy make an appearance in my titles. For example, my work titled “Exodus 22:18” is a nod to the Salem Witch Trials, an interest I had picked up for about a month while painting. The amount of utter dehumanization and misogyny during this period moved me, and ultimately led me to titling the work with the intent of forcing the viewer to be forced to Google the Bible verse affiliated with witchcraft. Make no mistake: all art is political (even flowers).

So fast forward to a gallery opening when I’m chatting with an art-admirer and they ask the dreaded question, “what does it mean?” How do I even begin to verbalize what took me hours upon hours to work through myself? And at the point of making the decision to share a piece of art with the world…a piece of myself… is it really even about me anymore? Art is subjective, period. Art is also incredibly personal. That’s why everyone has a different favorite piece in the art gallery, or when you ask them why it’s their favorite piece the answer is always different. When you look at a piece of art, your own personal experiences will shape what you see, feel, and interpret.

I once knew a man that was often angry at the world— you know the type. I would find him often scoffing at things he didn’t understand: art included. He often found himself provoked at abstract acrylic pour artworks. We had many words over the topic, as I also didn’t care much for the technique. It didn’t dawn on me until much later that regardless of the emotion the piece provoked, we still found ourself talking about it—perhaps even more than if we would’ve just said we liked it and moved on. That artwork had still lived up to its purpose of inciting thoughts, feelings, and conversation. You see, the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. And neither of us were really “indifferent” about acrylic pours.

Conclusion

The next time you’re wondering what the meaning of an artwork is, I challenge you to interpret your own first. As an artist, I love hearing other’s perspectives on my work. There is nothing I can say as an artist that will satiate an onlookers curiosity quite like the closure they’ll get from their own interpretation. In a world of instant information, we’re wired to want an immediate answer so we can immediately shake the thought and move on. In resisting that urge and reflecting on our own meaning, we not only gain understanding of ourselves, but the world around us as well.