Stop Explaining Your Art (While You're Making It)

Stop Explaining Your Art (While You’re Making It)

I’m in my studio, three hours deep in a painting that’s finally starting to talk back to me, when someone walks in and immediately asks: “What’s it supposed to be?”

SUPPOSED to be?

Listen, if I knew what it was supposed to be, I’d just take a photograph and save myself the paint. The whole point is that I’m having a conversation with the thing, and conversations - good ones anyway - involve surprises.

But here’s what really gets me: the assumption that I should have a elevator pitch ready for work that’s still wet. Like somehow my painting becomes more legitimate if I can wrap it in words before the brush is even clean.

You know what Temple Grandin says about thinking in pictures? That’s what’s happening here. I’m solving visual problems that don’t have verbal equivalents yet. When someone demands an explanation mid-process, they’re essentially asking me to translate a dream while I’m still dreaming it.

And don’t get me started on the people who nod knowingly when I say “I don’t know yet” and then reply with “Oh, so it’s abstract.” No, Karen. It’s not abstract. It’s specific as hell - it’s just specific to something your word-brain hasn’t catalogued yet.

Here’s the deal: meaning isn’t a message I hide in the painting like some Easter egg. It’s what happens when your eyes and my surfaces have their own little chat. Your brain will figure out what it needs to figure out, and it’ll be more interesting than anything I could tell you anyway.

So next time you see an artist working, maybe try this: look first, talk later. Trust me, the painting has more to say than I do.