I used to believe that artists proceeded by having an idea (call it inspiration if you will) and that this idea was then transferred from the brain of the artist to the surface of the work of art. I suppose that at its simplest this would have meant that artists engaged in a kind of copying. Now I realise that this is a long way from the truth. The process of artistic creation involves a constant dialogue between an originating idea, the materials with which one is working, and the practical process of working it out the idea into a finished piece. That process can, on occasions, be quite long and complex.
I’ve had in mind an idea for a little while, and the other day I went out to Almscliff Crag and its environs in order to collect reference material. So far, so good. The original concept included an element of text as well as the purely visual material. Yesterday evening and the afternoon I have been able to begin the process of working up this idea into a finished piece of work, and already it has become clear that on this journey I have lost sight already of exactly what the destination might be.
The element of text has been the first casualty. Then, as I have been working on the layout of the piece, it became clear that I will have to alter the relative scale of two of the elements in the design. I suppose that the process of adaptation actually began even before I had started to lay out the design, in that I realised that I would probably need to re-cycle a picture frame and mount rather than commission new ones, so that the format I have adopted has been only partially dictated by the idea with which I began. I’m not half way through the drawing stage yet, let alone considering the colour palette I will use. Looking at my reference material I have come to realise that I might make some adaptations in that respect.
Isn’t there an old saying: “It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.”? Well: I guess that sums up something essential about the life of an artist.