Self-editing and choosing a creative path

As an artist, you are an explorer, one who ventures into the unchartered regions of the cultural, psychic, and spiritual landscapes, bringing back stories and artefacts that describe your experiences there. Whilst on your expedition you may see on the horizon a mountain of an idea that you want to conquer. You can see its shape, but not the route to the top.

Traversing this route is the journey you go on to create an artwork or a series of pieces. You must first look all around you, probe out in all directions, experiment, and research. Stay healthy, alert and prepared for the road ahead. Observe other artists on their journey, retrace some of their steps and learn their techniques, work to improve your skills and try new materials. To create art you must first create, and do this with no bounds, inhibitions, or presuppositions.

So how do you know when you’re on the right path? How can you tell if these experiments are successful? It’s a feeling, a sense of serenity, an intuitive understanding of things clicking into place. The work you’re creating aligns with what you want to communicate to the viewer.

This is an excellent time to mention the importance of knowing what you want to communicate. It’s often in the journey that we discover the message and art can say so much more than we can express in words. There needs to be an ongoing conversation with oneself about where you’re headed, although this is best done at intervals from creating, rather than during moments of creativity. You should know why you set off, and why you create what you create, whilst you’re learning what experience you want to induce in others and how best to make it happen.

As you experiment, reflect, and make selections you’re approaching the base of the mountain, or maybe a different peak entirely from the one you first spotted. The route up is visible, but it still dips and curls out of sight. Keep testing, keep experimenting, and don’t be afraid to turn back and take a different route, or return to a path once abandoned.

This is where I’m at now, approaching a new peak, a new body of work. I have a planned route, a process in mind and tools laid out. It’s been a few weeks of experimentation and fumbling in the foothills to get here, but I’m excited about the journey, what I’ll find on the way and the views from the top.