14. Call it Good: How to Finish Creative Work
Show Notes
Big 3 Ideas from this episode:
When is a work of art DONE? How do you decide?
Do you have anxiety over when to call a work finished and move on?
Download the Wild/Abandon Worksheet to help you gain self-awareness around your pathway to finishing project.
EPISODE No. 14
The pathway to finishing creative work
Today, I discuss our thoughts and feelings around
finishing art projects, and we consider this quote
by the poet Paul Valery:
“A poem is never finished, merely abandoned.”
(Does your work have abandonment issues?)
Some Famous “Unfinished” Paintings:
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TRANSCRIPT:
Episode 14: Call it Good
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[00:00:00] The metaphor mindset is a podcast for artists and creative thinkers, entrepreneurs and leaders who want to explore ideas around creativity and commerce.
[00:00:19] And this is episode 14. Call it good.
[00:00:24] When is a piece of art finished?
[00:00:29] The symbolist poet. Paul Valery said a poem is never finished, merely abandoned.
[00:00:35] Is your art like a neighborhood full of abandoned buildings. half constructed with see-through walls and no roof. I feel like that's sometimes. And I have a stack of paintings. In my studio that are done. I know a lot of artists that struggle with identifying that sweet moment when you step back and say, It's done.
[00:00:55] We all get excited. We get going on a project and more often than not, then we come to a point where we're just bored or uninterested or tired, or we've moved on to something new.
[00:01:06] So today I'm going to talk about what it means to be done. And try to find some interesting ways to make the idea of finishing work. Work for you.
[00:01:15] The idea. Of what a finished work of art is, has changed drastically in the past 150 years. In the 19th century, the academies of art were basically quality control for the art business.
[00:01:30] In order to be in a big exhibition, you had to go through a committee the academy would of course. Identify whether your pieces were up to snuff or not. And of course this meant mostly men. And in Paris at Only four women per year were accepted to the academy for many years. So there's that.
[00:01:48] So the academy had control of pretty much everything that artists did if they wanted to succeed.
[00:01:55] In 1872 Claude Monet painted an industrial early morning scene. Of the port of Le Havre. He called it "Impression, Sunrise.".
[00:02:06] This term impressionism. Had been around for a few years. During the Barbizon School, the idea of impression was giving a feeling or an emotion to a painting.
[00:02:18] But when it came down to Claude, Monet showing his peace impression, sunrise. Impressionism at first. Was an insult.
[00:02:27] The critic, Louie Leroy.
[00:02:29] Accused this painting. Of being a sketch or an impression. Not a finished painting.
[00:02:37] And this was because it had. A lot of brush strokes. It had spaces between the brush strokes. It looked like it was. Done quickly. And this. Had To do. With the way that people saw finished paintings.
[00:02:52] One reason impressionism was a derogatory term at first. Was because the method of finishing art and [00:03:00] creating. a sleek, shiny varnished framed product. Was really a product of Victorian thought.
[00:03:06] And ironically impressionism itself was also. a product of the Victorian Industrial Revolution.
[00:03:14] The 19th century was all about commerce and commodification and progress. And art was about packaging, a person or an idea. or a Royal figure. For public consumption. It was the social media of its day.
[00:03:31] Before the 19th century printing and painting were the only ways that people could manage their image. Aristocracy and nobility and royalty wanted to control their image.
[00:03:43] When impressionism happened. Art became more about the process.
[00:03:48] The textile industry with all of its new dyes and colors. And then also the process of putting paint into tubes. Made it possible for artists to come out of the dark controlled space of the studio. And into the light. It made it possible.
[00:04:06] For artists to travel light, to paint outdoors. With a small easel, just a few tubes of paint.
[00:04:12] They could do studies. Or even final works outside,
[00:04:16] so many of the works didn't seem finished in the traditional sense.
[00:04:20] So during the time when Monet was painting impression, sunrise, the whole idea of what a finished painting was really shifted. This is another reason that impressionism really found resonance with Asian art. In my opinion.
[00:04:35] Japanese and Chinese art. Often relied on simple brush strokes. Resulting in a look of instantaneous energy
[00:04:43] rather than a look. Of reworked controlled illusion that was so popular in the 18th and 19th century European tradition.
[00:04:51] So I'm going over all this, just to say that the whole idea of what done means. What a finished work of art is, has changed over the years. Through many traditions and it continues to shift even in our time.
[00:05:07] Once the perfect uncracked egg of Victorian realism. Was broken apart and that light of impressionism, post-impressionism the wild abandon of the foist color. Started to come out.
[00:05:23] And the spiritual resurgence of abstract art. And all of the movements that came after it, we could start to see the process of the artist at This is no judgment on Victorian painting. It was amazing. But the monumental shift really opened so many doors.
[00:05:42] So now in the information age with every history and tradition at our fingertips.
[00:05:47] And new ones emerging as we speak like AI, The concept of a finished work of art. Is shifting even more so.
[00:05:56] Marcel Duchamp said the artist performs [00:06:00] only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it. And it's only the onlooker who has the last word.
[00:06:07] But Rembrandt said it is the artist who decides when a work of art is finished.
[00:06:12] For the artist in the studio only you can decide when your work is done, but sometimes this brings us a lot of anxiety. Especially in the age of social media, where a lot of people put their work out there and say, do you think this is finished? That question is always amusing to me.
[00:06:27] Because the people on social media are just randomly scrolling past. They have no idea what you're trying to do as an artist. What your goal is? With the piece. So it's just feels like an absurd question to me. This all came up. In a conversation with an artist friend of mine.
[00:06:46] My friend Ossa Signed up for an online workshop that I did called Call it Good. How to finish any art project? And we had an amazing convers. I told her about Valery's quote.
[00:06:57] "A poem is never finished. Merely abandoned." And she talks about how she feels when she paints in that zone. Or flow state and she called it wild abandon.
[00:07:08] That in her art. Which is multidisciplinary ceramics and glass and jewelry and painting.
[00:07:14] She said, I want to let my art unfold without judgment. And then. I will see what unfolds from that. I started to think about these two terms.
[00:07:22] Abandon. And wild abandon, And I realized that this word abandon is another one of those Janus words that I've talked about before. Or a contranym where a word can mean also its opposite. So abandon can mean a couple of things. One. To leave behind.
[00:07:39] two to devote oneself entirely to focus on completely. When we leave something behind, we turn away from it. We turn our face away. And when we.
[00:07:49] Work. in wild abandon, we turn our face towards it. And. Turn away from everything else.
[00:07:56] Both have the sense of surrendering control. In one case. The control is surrendered to someone else.
[00:08:02] And in the other sense, We surrender control to the creative process.
[00:08:07] So I'm thinking about my work and its abandonment issues. And I'm wondering if you feel the same way.
[00:08:13] I broke this process down into four stages first. There's aha. Then wild abandon. Then ask an answer. And then Advancement. So the first stage of making is that aha.
[00:08:28] Moment. When the roots of your work and your ideas have been spreading underground. This is always happening, but there's that one moment when the idea emerges.
[00:08:37] As one that you will pursue. And this can happen in your mind, in your reading, in your journal or. On your canvas in the studio.
[00:08:46] There's just that awesome moment when something happens and one idea emerges. And it presents itself as the one that you will pursue. What we do at that point is abandon Every other idea in favor of this current idea. And [00:09:00] then we enter into the flow state. The zone.
[00:09:04] The wild abandon. Of the creative process.
[00:09:08] And this wild abandon Sometimes for me. At least takes a lot of energy. Time stops. Hours go by.
[00:09:17] I talk about this in episode seven, fear and flow and go through all the different stages of the flow state.
So when the energy of wild abandon is spent. Then you kind of come back to reality. And you step back and you look at your work
and stage three is ask and answer. And usually the question is now what is it done? Is it something I like, will anyone else like it? All these questions, start to come up. And we can spin in this asking phase for a long time. But I suggest that if you start to answer some of these questions for yourself, You think of not just asking, but also answering. It's really helpful. So when you say now, what then try to answer that for yourself.
[00:10:02] If we spin in this phase. For a long time. This is where we can drop and abandon our paintings because it's really uncomfortable.
[00:10:11] But in order to move forward and not to lose tons of energy and indecision. We can decide to enter the last phase of the wild abandoned scale. Advance.
[00:10:20] So when you enter the advance phase, Of the creative process, you can go down two roads. One is unintentional. And the unintentional road, usually for me means reworking a piece. Until I kill it. Or just abandoning that piece. Neither one is really a good option. And they both have to do with my thoughts about my When I'm thinking this piece is not done, it's not perfect.
[00:10:46] There's something I can do to make it perfect. Then often I just keep spinning in that phase.
[00:10:53] But if you are thinking about intentional advancement,
[00:10:57] Then the idea of constraints, putting constraints around your own work. Is really helpful.
[00:11:03] Those kind of constraints can be. I'm going to work on this piece for another hour. And then call it. Good. I'm going to wait for a week, live with it. Then work on it for one day and then I'll be done.
[00:11:16] Now this doesn't work for every piece of And sometimes you just want something to be in your studio for months on end and just look at it and let it reveal and unfold over time. But what I'm offering is that if you do have an ongoing issue around. The feeling that you. Don't know when something's done.
[00:11:35] That you get to decide this, you can put your own constraints around your And for me, that's been very freeing.
[00:11:43] So now I want to share part of the reason that I titled this episode. Call it good. It came from the creation story in the Bible.
[00:11:54] So over seven days, God is going through the exact same process. We're talking about.
[00:11:58] Day one. He [00:12:00] says, let there be light.
[00:12:01] This is the aha moment. When he saw there was light. And he said it was good. The actual word in the original Hebrew is Tov. Like mazel Tov.
[00:12:10] And it means not great, not perfect, but good. In the sense of viable, favorable.
[00:12:18] But mostly functional.
[00:12:19] God saw the light and said it was tov. Or good. What he was saying Hey, this is viable. This just might work.
[00:12:29] The original word, tov in Hebrew. Has two parts. One. Is a circle with an X through it, which means basket or container.
[00:12:38] And the other one is kind of a little square labyrinth. That means. House. So this word actually means surrounding the house. It's the idea. That things are working, that things are contained.
[00:12:50] Functional. That everything is okay. copacetic. So this word doesn't mean good in a moralistic or aesthetic sense. It means something more like this will work. This is functional. This is viable. The opposite of this in Hebrew is raw or dysfunctional. Something does not work.
[00:13:12] As artists, we want to finish things, but we also meant want to make something more than just viable, just functional. We want to create beauty, perfection, the sublime.
[00:13:23] But we have to remember, we are dipping into this whole process of creation. In this story. When the creator made the world, he didn't make something that was perfect and would never change.
[00:13:36] He planted the seed that would grow into the world that could make its own choices.
[00:13:42] And in a sense, when we create our work, we put it out there into the world. And we have to surrender. Some of that control over that piece. How other people see it, how they interpret it. Like Duchamp said. The viewer completes the work.
[00:13:57] So even God, didn't finish the world. He just said it in motion.
[00:14:01] So as a creator. We're at the ask and answer stage now.
[00:14:05] What is working? What is working right now?
[00:14:09] That As creators we can move on to create another day.
[00:14:13] That awesome. Aha. Moment will happen again, but only if we can create space for it. The creation will grow up and make its own decision. So this creative process is a cycle of the aha moment. When the ideas rise and you live in that wild, abandon the zone.
[00:14:32] Then you stop and stand back and you ask and answer.
[00:14:36] And then to advance, you have to put some sort of constraints on your own work. And on your own process, so you can move forward.
[00:14:45] If you want to learn more about this wild abandon scale. I created a little downloadable PDF on my website, metaphormindset.com So you can see where you are. In terms [00:15:00] of finishing pieces. How you feel about it? And how you can advance.
[00:15:05] Thanks everyone and have a courageously creative week.
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