Ideation and Process: Personal Research
Hey stranger!
Despite what the title says, we don’t immediately jump to deep- reflective-psychoanalyzation of ourselves to make something but that does come up often in this with the process, it is integrative in my studio. But I find that to become easy to get lost in, maybe I’ll have memory come up multiple times in a week and I begin thinking about it in terms of sensation: (what do I feel, see, taste), who I was then and thousands of more questions that what I look for ends up getting lost in conversation.
There are ways to conduct personal research in simpler terms that I begin a project with. I have already discussed free writes about my practice, the visual artist timeline, the general “cycle” right now for a project. A writer may look through their old writings and establish a pattern by which they choose to either continue writing with that, whatever it may be that they identify in their style, or realize they want to take their work a completely different direction; with cadence, characters, genre or whatever their heart desires to be different. I do that often with looking at my old work or my own writings, even childhood. I think about the art that’s stored away at my mom’s. I can mull over what kinds of creative habits and choices I have always gravitated towards and how it’s evolved over these years; there obviously are many artistic (and personal) patterns I can draw back into childhood by doing this.
Another personal research bit I do that is much more fun, is what music have I been playing in the studio recently (very serious scholarly research I know right) but it can be relevant. With ideas, we only need what’s at the tip of our fingers already. I pay attention to how I spend my time and space, what I am listening to or thinking about tends to be very related to each other.
On the topic of free writes, because that is what I tend toward the most, I can choose essentially any subject I want and I just write and not stop anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes. Questions for free writes I ask myself the most with current works:
-What’s going on in the studio this week?
-What works are facing the wall, what did I feel what I last worked on them?
-What problems am I facing in a piece?
-What are the ways I can solve it?
- Color mixes from the past week
-What are my goals (either for the week or longer term)
With works that face the wall (that’s what I do when I want a break with a work) after a rest from it, I’ll take it out and write down every single thing that I would do differently now and then I have a plan for a piece right there!
-what have I been dreaming about?
-What is a word that’s come to mind a lot this week?
-What themes internally am I facing right now?
-What colors are in many old works?
-What subject matter is in old work?
With the knowledge I have now, would I revisit this piece or concept and rework it?
What bothered me in my space this week physically and mentally?
What have I been continually thinking about this week?
Now, reader, I don’t do all of these at once or the same ones every time. This is a general explanation of an abstract process that I’m building studio habits around in terms of ideation for future paintings. I do as many as it takes to begin forming an idea based on what I find with what I write. This used to all be mental and intuitive, but that is something that has changed: a need for multiple outlets to put the thoughts I have in the studio. Your time sitting here and doing nothing is important. I believe creatives do need periods of just sitting with the work, and not making anything. Usually what I am doing in those moments is thinking SO hard about ideas, stirring a big pot of idea soup, but if someone walked around the corner they would see me sitting, hunched over like an insane person, staring into a wall like my life depends on it. I’ll think about my works, or question myself on my drive home, in the shower, right before bed. However, in those scenarios, I forget the ideas I have. I am a visual and tactile person with a bad memory, and if I confine myself only to mentally walking myself through my studio and my works and the world in my mind, my work will not grow the way I want it to. We artists must write! Make your thoughts physical and find the visual language you are satiating within your own mind. You just have to sit with yourself, and revisit who you are. Writing is a way that we define ourselves. What I say about my work, myself, loved ones, my past, regrets, loss, and my childhood self and all the in between is what I understand about myself; it is reflecting back at me. I don’t think my understanding of any of those states of mind can be understood in a linear state. They much more like a web of cycles. So I write about them and figure out what they are and what they mean to me. I do it to understand the way I think.
I view art as a visual form of thinking. However, it is not something someone can just suddenly do perfectly, but by exploration of the self and the world, and by writing, we can find what we are thinking about and then let it live forever on canvas.
I hope you find what you’re thinking about stranger.
