As a working artist, there’s pressure to produce. Sometimes, it feels like my pieces just flow out one after another. Sometimes, it feels like a tug of war that I’m not winning.
I’m sure there are artists out there who churn out work with ease and efficiency. I’m not one of them, at least, not this week. But the weird thing is, just when I think I’m not getting anywhere at all and leave my studio in frustration, I come back the next week and there, all around me, are new pieces. And they’re not bad.
I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. Honest.
I walk out in disgust and total frustration only to return to a room filled with pieces in process that I find myself excited and pleased about. It seems to happen overnight and I’ve long suspected that I have some very artistic elves living in my house, who while I am asleep or working in another part of the house, step in and nudge my pieces along the right road.
This last week, after spending days working on several pieces, feeling the frustration of coils drying up and snapping, slabs cracking and screening crinkling in all the wrong ways, I left my studio to clean and redo a room upstairs. This week, I walked into my studio to find the bowl and coils had become one, the slab held its shape and the screening was ready for paint.
Amazing.
The process of making art is a kind of magic. It can be wonderfully exhilarating and frustrating and fun and difficult. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. Ok. Maybe I would, but then, what would those elves have to do?
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