When to Stop

Sea Ice - still a work in progress.Collage 23 cm w x 16cm h

Many people say to me that they find it difficult to know when to stop when they are creating their artworks. I find that the best way is to put the whole work aside for a few days and reassess it later – any additional tweaks can be done then.

Quite often my best work is done really quickly. Things “just click” and the work literally makes itself. Other pieces I will labour over but these are not as successful as they have lost that initial “spark”. It’s much easier to create easily when you are coming from a place of energy “flow”.

I’ve been thinking about creative flow all this week as I’ve navigated my way back into my creative practice. Collage has helped. My hands find their own rhythm when they are busy tearing, placing and creating moveable compositions which can be altered before they are fixed into place.

The best tool I use for composition is my phone camera. I place bits of paper or textiles together intuitively and then take a picture of it. This is the great thing about digital photography, you don’t have to worry about wasting precious film and the result is instant.

Often the image looks clearer on the computer or phone. I can see where there needs to be extra attention to a compositional element or adding other textures of colours to capture the essence of what I want the visual picture to reveal.

I have a few cyanotype prints which hadn’t been resolved into final artworks which I have been playing with this week. I wanted to get that sense of travelling through the sea ice and how the ice shapes cover the surface of the water. Icebergs are seductive. They look incredibly beautiful with their organic shapes and often have a turquoise reflection at their base.

I tried numerous compositional elements until I felt that I was overthinking. So I scrapped them all and started again, putting bigger shapes down and then adding a few smaller ones later. Sometimes I have to commit to the glue or stitching so that I don’t keep moving things around continually and never resolving the work to my satisfaction.

Not all of my creations will make the “final cut” when I select works for my exhibition in February 2023. What I do know is that the more work I make, the better the chance of creating enough artworks of quality that I feel are worth framing and hanging.

First version of the collage. Rejected.

Second version of the collage - foundational layers