The Space Between Making and Being Seen

I sat down to write my blog this afternoon and just felt a bit blah.

I wrote 500 words and thought, Well, that’s not going to fly.

Perhaps it was because I had been thinking about what happens after. The after that comes when you have been working hell for leather and things are finally completed, or simply come to a natural end.

Artists often talk about fallow periods and how useful they can be. A time to rest, reflect, replenish and allow new ideas to emerge.

I am in an odd space at the moment. I am still working with a great deal of focus, but several significant things have wrapped up, or are coming to a conclusion. My creative brain is simply a bit full.

For more than six months, I have been writing my online course, The Tuesday Artist. I have run a masterclass, launched the course, written ads and emails, created workbooks and field guides, and I am about to begin teaching the first pilot.

At the same time, I have been making my monthly still life paintings and recently held a solo exhibition showing a year’s worth of that work.

I completed the 100 Day Project and have been steadily developing a new body of work for a show in October. That work is now slowly concluding, with 54 paintings at 30 x 30 cm and another 30 at 10 x 10 cm.

And I have finally reached the end of my 12-month business course.

That has been huge for me. I have learnt so much.

I realised just how far I had come during a recent live call with new students. As I listened to them talk about their overwhelm, I recognised that feeling completely. I had been there myself only a few months earlier. This time, though, I was listening from the other side of it.

So perhaps this strange feeling is not quite a fallow period. It is something else.

It is the space between making and being seen.

We spend a lot of time talking about the courage it takes to begin something. But we don’t talk nearly enough about the courage it takes to finish it, put it out into the world, and wait.

As an artist, I make most of my work alone. I am well aware that being seen is a different creative skill from making.

I have learned to wear the discomfort. I don’t exactly enjoy it, but I have learned to endure it.

There is a particular kind of courage involved in allowing your work to be judged, ignored, loved, misunderstood, or simply received quietly. There is a particular kind of vulnerability that comes after you have made something.

I know artists who avoid this kind of friction.

They don’t price their work because they fear it won’t sell, or that someone will say it is too expensive. They avoid exhibiting in spaces where there will be a lot of eyes on their work. They don’t post on social media because they fear criticism.

All of this is understandable to a degree. But showing your work is part of the job of being an artist.

If your work is made in isolation and never put out into the world, does it have the same value?

I don’t know the answer to that. Making work has value in itself. The process matters. The learning matters. The private act of creating matters.

But I do believe that there is something important in allowing the work to leave the studio.

When you finish a project, whether it is a painting, a body of work, a piece of writing or a course, you find yourself in a liminal space.

The work is finished. The decisions have been made. You have done everything you can think of.

Then, eventually, you have to let it go.

You hang the painting, submit the application, open the exhibition, publish the blog post - or launch the course - and wait.

That wait can be agony.

The response to the work is not the same thing as the value of the work. But knowing that intellectually and feeling it emotionally are two very different things.

I have learned not to worry as much as I used to. There was a time when I was extremely anxious about showing my work.

You can objectively know that a piece is good, but having it hanging on a public wall is the very definition of exposure. It is there for all to see.

My art practice is about the process. It is not only about the result.

The making is what I do. It is how I learn.

Once a painting is finished, I am usually done with it. I am already thinking about the next piece, the next question or the next possibility.

But that doesn’t quite negate the anxiety created by having something - whether it is a painting, a course, a piece of writing or a business idea - out in the world.

Creating something you believe in and waiting to see whether anyone else wants it is a vulnerable thing.

I make the work privately, often without feedback.

My line manager is me.

I make hundreds of decisions that no one sees. I reach the point where I have to stop changing things.

Then it is time to show up and be counted.

People respond - or they don’t.

And you have to keep believing in the value of the work without allowing the response to define it.

A painting can be important even if it doesn’t sell immediately. An idea can be worthwhile before it has found its audience. And a new project can still be a success while it is teaching you what it needs to become.

This month, I am beginning the first pilot of The Tuesday Artist, a six-week course about learning to see, think and build a creative practice.

It feels fitting that, after encouraging other artists to take creative risks, I am being asked to take one too.

Perhaps success is not always measured by how many people respond immediately.

Perhaps sometimes success is making the thing, sharing it before you feel entirely ready, and allowing it to become useful to the people who do find it.

The bravery - or perhaps it is bloody-mindedness - is then returning to the studio, the desk or the drawing board and continuing.

You have to keep at it.