Christian Bazant-Hegemark – Page 5 – A Handbook for Emerging Artists

How do I establish organic engagement with a gallery, specifically when looking for representation?

Some artists find representation without having searched for it: a gallery approaches them on their own. Maybe they saw someone’s work at the art school’s open days, or a professor or mutual acquaintance mentioned the work. Either way: this is rare. If you haven’t been approached by a gallery, but want to establish contact, you need to work on expanding your network. This will help you to create organic engagement opportunities.

Consider the following strategies:

Understand the gallery’s network, and embed yourself within it: Understand which artists and gatekeepers the gallery is surrounded by, and see whether you can gradually increase contact with them. This is easiest done at gallery events (openings, artist talks, curated tours, art fairs, etc), where you can listen in, observe and judge. Attending these public events creates the chance to get invited to the more private circles that often happen alongside: an opening dinner, or drinks in the gallery’s back room. These occasions are not meant for you to push your work; rather, they should serve as a platform to understand the gallery’s environment, and to organically establish connections. The more intimate the setting you get into, the less the situation will be about you. Understand that everyone usually has an agenda to push: the gallerist might want to generate sales or network with guests; the staff might be busy attending to collectors; fellow artists might see a curator they’d want to talk to. That’s why you want to be both natural and sensitive whenever you get invited to an “inner circle” event: you don’t want to come across as pushy or needy.
Understand your supporters and their potential to gain gallery awareness: We all know people with connections; your existing network might include artists, collectors, professors and assistants, family and friends, etc. If you’re lucky, one of these has a direct connection to the gallery you’re interested in (or to a gallery you don’t yet know of). Maybe one of them is interested in highlighting your work? While directly asking someone for such a favor puts them on the spot, sometimes supporters think of this on their own. This drastically changes the dynamic to your potential advantage: it’s nearly impossible for an artist to approach a gallery, yet a third party can often manage this without resulting in weirdness. Understand that while some supporters won’t be interested in helping you, others might do it in pushy, detrimental ways. Ideally, the third party checks back with you, to understand how to adequately highlight your work to a gallery – which henceforth knows about you. This doesn’t guarantee their professional interest, but helps to connect a step further: you’d now be more visible than before. This is true even if they forget about you, since the next time someone drops your name, they are more likely to remember it.
Connect to the gallery’s represented artists: While anyone in your network can be helpful in generating gallery awareness, a gallery’s represented artists can often be a natural point of contact (this can be especially true if your network doesn’t feature anyone else who might be able to help you). Can you connect to some of them? If you don’t know any of a gallery’s represented artist yet, consider visiting the gallery’s public events to gradually try to change that.
Once you naturally jell with someone, the mutual interest for each other might result in worthwhile discussions about each other’s work, the state of the art world, etc. Drinks might follow. Studio visits. These kinds of first steps could lead to mutual support (when installing shows, moving studios, needing advice, etc) or even friendship; they could lead to collaborations on specific works or exhibitions, which sometimes can generate the galleries’ awareness of you. Understand that your efforts will usually only be as efficient as they are authentic: faking interest in artists (to get their galleries’ attention) will rarely work out, and has the real risk of you coming across as egoistic and unlikable. As with all networking efforts, it’s best to do them in a way that inherently feels good to everyone who’s involved; this way, the process rewards itself.
Don’t ask represented artists to highlight your work to their gallery. They might feel their trust betrayed, might see you as competition, or might simply not feel comfortable proposing a business deal to their gallery (read the comments at the end of this chapter for details).
Expand your general network: Instead of directly aiming for a gallery’s attention, expand your general network to include various layers of gatekeepers: local artists, curators, art writers, non-profit venues, etc. This long-term strategy strengthens your position in the local art scene, and makes it more likely for you to get to know someone of the gallery in question. The art world is fluid: people leave their jobs to work at other places (institutions, other galleries, non-profits, etc), and in other functions: an assistant from three years ago could be tomorrow’s gallery director or head curator of an institution you’d like to collaborate.
Consider non-local galleries and networks: Instead of looking for local galleries only, consider which non-local artists you know. Are they connected to galleries, non-profit art spaces, or do they curate on their own? Visiting them might expand your network in entirely unexpected ways, with the additional benefit of you getting to know another art scene. Maybe your contact can tell you about galleries that might be of interest to you? Find out about efficient scheduling: a week with many openings or an art fair can lead to dozens of organic networking opportunities.
Instead of connecting to non-local artists in your network, you can also research the represented artists of specific non-local galleries. Consider reaching out to them: maybe there’s time for a meeting or studio visit to discuss their work? In case of actual curiosity on your behalf, this can be a potent way to expand your network, and potentially, over the years, even get the gallery’s attention. While finding a gallery might be your driving force, refrain from solely judging your efforts by the outcome (to have found a gallery representation); instead, focus on the process: to have gotten in touch with fellow artists and their work. You can never know what this will bring to you in the upcoming years.
Spot disinterest: Understand that you can’t force interest in you or your work. While in your mind your work might be a perfect fit, this doesn’t say anything about the realities and interests of the gallery in question. As with dating, it takes two to tango. When you notice conversations or situations to be imbalanced (gallery staff interrupting you, not listening or being attentive, etc.), then accept this disinterest. You can try to see whether over the months, someone else in the gallery shows more curiosity, or whether a specific person simply was in a bad mood; but understand that mutual likeability is random, and often can’t be influenced. Don’t let this frustrate you, but accept such implicit rejections, and continue your search elsewhere.

Refrain from asking others to highlight your work to galleries. Even though you might envision this to be easy for them, you simply cannot know, which usually makes it inappropriate: It puts the burden on someone else, and asks for quite a commitment to your work: even if the person you ask truly likes your work, they might not feel comfortable highlighting it to others – especially to potential business collaborators. Asking others to push your work is usually not organic, but forceful: a demand that puts someone on the spot, requiring them to either comply or shy away – both resulting in a weird power imbalance. Trying to be your own brand ambassador is more respectful and sensitive, and has the advantage of personal growth and control about how external parties are approached. Instead of asking someone to highlight your work, wait and see whether they might offer this on their own. Don’t expect it though: it’s unlikely to happen.

How do I increase the commitment (and thus pressure)?

Beginnings require commitment, which often feels like the first obstacle to get going. This is a conundrum: one is required to start, in order to.. start. So what can be done to make beginnings easier? Consider experimenting with the following strategies, to see which work best for you:

Minimize stressors: Understand what causes you stress: fears (of failure, of facing your inabilities, of feeling incompetent), the wrong working environment or materials (a moldy or dusty storage space, lack of heating, a studio that’s too noisy; cheap colors that fade), etc. There’s a range of conditions you might need to be met, in order to begin anything. These conditions might be unclear to you, so it pays off to investigate them: if you feel uncomfortable because people are watching you; if you are supposed to work silently, yet inherently need to use noisy tools; if your environment has to stay clean, yet your process creates a mess; if you need more time than you have available, etc. Minimizing stressors can precede commitment, and represent the groundwork to getting going.
Note that humans aren’t terribly good in understanding their actual needs; removing all stressors can lead to a state of boredom and rot that ultimately only benefits creative decay. We all know established artists with the nicest studios and work visibility, who don’t really have a strong game going anymore; analyzing stressors can never be straight-forward, but will benefit from a deep psychological self-awareness.
Previsualize: Previsualization lets you think about the intended work, with the intention of finding upcoming challenges; it’s a form of anticipation. This turns stressful obstacles (encountered during production) into expectations: you previsualize because you want to find obstacles. You can use all sorts of methods to previsualize: 3d software, pencil sketches, a mind map or bullet list, etc; the closer the previsualization medium relates to the final medium, the more exact your predictions will usually be. Understand that you can’t anticipate all challenges emerging from a creative endeavor; you don’t have to: the idea here is to ease your way into a work, not to solve it beforehand.
Gradually increase the authority of your tools/materials/environment/collaborators: Everything can have authority over us – not necessarily because of its own volition, but also because of our own, internalized attributions: a successful artist working next door; expensive paper we got as a present; the urge to record on cassette tape (instead of doing it digitally): the more authority we ascribe to a thing (or person), the more pressure we might feel. This can stall our experiments and progress.
To improve this, use tools, materials, environment and collaborators that have as little authority over you as possible. Increase your awareness of your authority ascriptions, and find alternatives that let you experiment more freely: use free or cheap doodle material to sketch your idea (use your living room to sketch a performance, instead of a proper stage; use cheap paper instead of a canvas; loan out a camera instead of buying one). Go sit on a park bench or at a café, if your studio and its many options drag you down. Collaborate with non-judgemental people.
Once you feel comfortable enough with what you want to do, mindfully (re)introduce the things to which you attribute higher authority. Use this heightened state to test your idea further, and repeat this process until you’re sure to know exactly what you want to accomplish. Once you use the final, most authoritative items, there will be way fewer choices to make, and thus less chances to mess up your work.
Learn to take initiative: Learn to anticipate that beginnings can cause stress. Once you get past the initial stress threshold and are embedded within the actually activity (editing, performing, writing, etc), your mind, in focused pursuit of an activity, often calms down: you are in the zone. There’s a flow. This can already be experienced upon reading a book: opening it might take considerable self-persuasion – yet once you’re immersed in it, time flies. Your attention is captured. This is true even though you might be aware of this dynamic; the more often you transcend your inhibition to begin something, the more likely you’ll experience the rewards of being in the zone. This knowledge can help you anticipate and circumvent compensatory actions meant to generate short-term satisfaction: eating sweets, checking mails, diving into social media. Pursuing a more worthwhile activity serves your long-term satisfaction – if only you’d begin to take initiative.
Understand resting periods: Understand that for those activities whose beginnings cause stress, their impact can be cushioned by scheduling rest periods. This creates focused work phases intended to progress: beginnings can be easier if they only demand thirty minutes of attention. Stay attentive to your ability to concentrate, and schedule your rest periods accordingly; if you notice getting tired, it makes sense to rest: your frustrations might otherwise rise exponentially.

How do I investigate my work?

Consider experimenting with the following investigation strategies, to see which work best for you:

Goal-less exploration: When there’s no obvious urge to steer in any direction, experiment with goal-less exploration: like a musician zoning into practicing their scales, gradually morphing into playing a tune that’s based on the practicing scale. Like someone learning to typewrite, yet subconsciously forming and typing their own words, sentences and paragraphs. Like someone experimenting with sound while editing their video, discovering a new way to visualize their work. Goal-less exploration can start with your movement on the street, clay or plasticine, paper and pencil, paper to fold, or a smartphone’s video camera: any tool that doesn’t require an actual financial commitment can offer this: where large works easily demand attention and respect to both beginners and professionals (already just for the money required for the physical materials and tools), starting out can be eased by using tools, media and processes that don’t cost a lot, or might even be free.

Goal-less exploration starts with free, low-commitment tools: sheets of paper from the family (or office) printer, as well as a pencil that’s lying around. This lets you explore without fear of failure, because the material doesn’t demand respect. If this doodling (with clay, on paper, on camera) leads to an idea, itch or urge: pursue it. Repeat the idea and flesh it out, making it more specific, more according to the vision that gradually forms in your mind.
Repeat previous successes: You might have specific compositions, specific ways to operate your tools, specific materials or paths to use that led to creations you’re happy with: if in doubt, see whether you can repeat them. This will show you whether this path holds the potential for a deeper inquiry (resulting in a work series, or simply a better knowledge of the craft required to pursue your work). Understanding and repeating previous work might give you the courage for further explorations.
Create work series: Creating a series of works lets you increase your understanding and sensitivities, simply because you get to dig deeper into the process, tools, contents and aesthetics required for its creation. Once a topic or aesthetic, a sentiment feels relevant to you, why not invest the time to deepen your understanding of it: your work’s quality will usually benefit from it. In addition, this will help you establish a body of work, which often increases your artistic credibility (since you’re seen as someone willing to pursue and balance specific ideas). It also results in higher availability of works, which can be advantageous in case of collector interest in a sold piece (since having a series will let them see further works of the same kind).
Investigate your topics: Investigate the potential topics of the works you gravitate towards: if for example you enjoy a specific figurative drawing you made, try to find out what you specifically like about it – whether it’s the figure’s posture, the facial portraiture, whether it’s about color, composition – or the emotional bond you felt when creating the work. By increasing your understanding of the potential topic you’re navigating, you gradually create a multidimensional, evergrowing reference system to expand and dive into: your artistic home. This helps you to explore that home in a somewhat structured way: which artists have created similar works, over the centuries? Who ever used similar styles or tools or materials? Investigating your work is a core practice of being an artist: if you aren’t curious about your work, who ever will be?
Verbalize your ideas: Take time to write down ideas – in prose, keywords, bullet lists etc. Create tree hierarchies or mind maps to connect your ideas to generalized topics, and see what insights you can retrieve. This is an exciting way to learn about your work, already because it’s a low-commitment way of translating your ideas: not yet into physical manifestations, but into words that usually can easily keep the vision – whereas actual works always also represent the sum of our inabilities. Verbalizing your work in this fragmented way can also help you to communicate about it elsewhere (in studio visits, to collectors or curators, etc). It can become a stepping stone to writing an actual text about your work, which is usually more demanding.

How do I focus?

You focus by using focusing strategies that work for you (keep experimenting!), and by establishing realistic attitudes about art and creativity.

We need focus to dive deeper into what we do. It’s unlikely to experience our own greatness without intention, attention – and focus. This takes time. Experiment with focusing strategies, and establish realistic attitudes about art and creativity. Processes don’t just work out of the box, but might need adaption for your situation. Success benefits from appreciating the small steps.

Active focus phases: Experiment with active focus phases, meant to make you radically present for a limited time: disable all notifications on your digital devices (buzz, sound or visual cues from your smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc.). If there’s a landline (lol), detach it. Commit to doing this in increasing time spans – you can start with fifteen minutes, and then double it to thirty once you feel ready for it; or you simply use it for the amount of time that feels right, without measuring. You will ultimately find your own path and rhythm.
(Understand that apart from focus, your artistic practice can also benefit from inattention and subconscious actions: being tired, exhausted or inattentive can still bring your work forward. It might temporarily create uncomfortable results, which can have more power and potential than the decisions made intentionally.)
Form habits: Focusing on work promotes the rewarding possibilities of flow states and progress, but requires much more dedication than procrastinating or staying inattentive; doing anything is more challenging than doing nothing – activity requires more than passivity. Once you want to get something done, your mind will usually offer tempting alternatives: being on social media, replying to messages, etc. These actions offer quicker rewards to the brain than the slow-roasting complexities of most work tasks, which make them tough competitors for your attention.

Establishing habits that define when and how you work can lessen the hurdles of actually pursuing your work. The less you have to think about the setup of work, the more likely you will “simply slide” into doing that work. Identifying and disabling distractions (leaving your phone outside of the work area; setting it to “do not disturb”, using white noise via headphones, or noise cancelling technology, etc.), establishing specific work routines (when to be in the studio, when to take breaks, when to do phone calls or replying to mails), using habit stacking (“after I prepared coffee, I sit down to read my emails”; “after I mix colors, I sit down to clean my brushes”; “after I got up, I take ten minutes to write my morning pages”, etc.) are powerful strategies to enable your mind to get into working mode – and to stay there. Consider reading more about habits, it is very powerful knowledge.

Identify your needs for a conscious lifestyle: Your mind needs clarity to focus on your work. While artistic processes can benefit from subconscious decision-making (e.g. by being tired, exhausted or intoxicated), there is power in consciousness: to have the mental capacity to understand what you do. The less distracted your life setup is, the more focus you will have for your work and its challenges. Removing alcohol and drugs, identifying toxic relationships, limiting partying, establishing good sleep and fitness routines – these will enable a more quiet life, at the cost of missing out on drama that can fuel your work and passion.

The challenge is to find a path through your life that isn’t ideological (“Drinking is obviously wrong!”, “I need to be in bed every day at 10pm, so I need to leave your party now”, etc.), but self-aware and dynamic. You want to party and meet friends, you want to experiment outside the ordinary – it will make life worthwhile. But you want to end the toxicity in your life, because it does the opposite. Consider coaching, psychotherapy and deep introspection to understand and establish somewhat “ideal” surroundings for the life that you want to live.

From itch to urge: Sometimes you feel an inclination: a word, a feeling, a tendency towards a process, material or medium. Let this itch become an urge: doodle around with the prior, to create space for the latter. What starts out as curiosity about a certain aesthetic or semantic, can lead to the absolute self-demand for a deeper inspection and inquiry about that curiosity’s potential. Don’t ignore your itches. Listen to your inclinations, and implement them. See where they lead you.
Demystify inspiration: Inspiration is one of the buzzwords of creativity, often thought about as appearing out of nowhere, especially to the lucky and talented few – with the implication that the rest of us simply aren’t that lucky. This is not true: inspiration can strike you randomly (on the bus or when watching TV), but can also be fostered by active introspection. You can create inspiration: Sit and think about what work to do next by going through its various aspects: what material and content will you use? How might these influence the work’s interpretation? How do you feel about this interpretation? Do you want to wiggle it a bit further? What describing attributes come to your mind – do these support your vision? How can you strengthen or weaken certain interpretations? What other works might make sense to get created alongside? How would you envision an exhibition featuring these works? Take a pencil and paper, or whatever other low-commitment tools work best for you, and brain-storm away.
Find inspiration: Even if you feel to be entirely without ideas of your own, you can proactively create space to finding inspiration – by exposing yourself to the world: become an active experiencer of life. Visit exhibitions (museums usually charge you, galleries won’t) and libraries, read books or magazines, watch documentaries, participate in discussions: inspiration is everywhere, as long as you actively want to find it. What were the last events that really excited you? Was it a sports game, your cat or dog, the way someone treated someone else; someone’s voice, a movie or TV series, a tune or perfume? Increase the awareness of your passions, to understand whether you want to investigate them further for your art practice. Become attentive to life and to your interests, and inspiration can be found in unexpected places.
Imitate others: Imitate other people’s work to learn more about yourself, by using appropriation as learning strategy. Understand whether it’s a certain topic or aesthetic that excites you, and see what happens upon making it yours. The idea is not to create a direct copy, but to appropriate the original into your artistic universe; to see it through your lens, and let that lens define the result. To imitate with the goal of creating something new and personal. This way you don’t need to worry about plagiarism: if your focus is to find and establish your own voice, you won’t become a copycat. If you pursue your own path deeply and authentically, you will only ever appropriate specific fragments, ultimately establishing your own themes and forms – simply because your interests are unlikely to totally coincide with the work you reference. This way, imitation can help you find your own voice – with the works that might have excited and triggered you years ago, often no longer being quite so exciting to you today.
Understand your apprenticeship status: Entering a new field confronts you with your curiosities, but also brings in new frustrations – no matter how experienced you are in other fields, entering a new territory will often make you feel like a rookie. Expect to misunderstand timings, processes, materials and tools – and your abilities. See the power of accepting these frustrations: as a beginner, failure is often all you have – because it only serves as the starting line. Every skill you acquire will stay with you, and will work for you henceforth – and no skill was ever acquired without a person’s openness to failure. Accept the journey into the arts as a brainstorming process within which there can’t be any actual mistakes; since every mistake will help you grow, the only way to fail is not to try.
Withhold judgement: Accept that there are no quality standards in your art making, except the ones you define – and even these are subject to change (through time or modified aesthetic ideals). Accept that in the arts, there can be no tolerance for other people telling you about allegedly “correct” ways of using tools, materials or processes. Become an empty mind, a beginner’s mind; become accepting of whatever inspires, motivates and enriches you. Withhold judgment about what you do, until you really, really know what you’re doing.

I want to understand my own work. How do I go about it?

Understanding your work is an endless process of approximation. While objects might appear to be static or finalized, our minds keep changing their ideas and interpretations about it. Someone might mention an aspect that we previously were oblivious of; a new piece might add additional contextual layers to a body of work. Understanding your work requires you to have an open-ended discussion with it, and to continuously manifest, challenge and readjust your opinions. Consider the following strategies:

Investigate your work to understand the topics it touches. Compile a list that includes as many attributes as possible, at least going into the work’s aesthetics, semantics and process. Understanding the basic metrics can be a first step (is it time-based or not; what are its size, weight, duration, materials, edition size, resolution, stableness, etc), but also your emotional associations.
Understand this as brainstorming exercise where you can’t do anything wrong. All associations are welcome, even if they might not make sense yet: your subconscious might know more about you and your work than might be obvious.
- Aesthetics: What materials are used in which way (“Yarn is colored and attached to stone surfaces”).
- Semantics: What is the work’s content (“Unclear, but potentially related to nocturnal activities of insects and/or surveillance technologies”).
- Process: How does your process look like (“Yarn is burnt at night, with a heat-sensitive camera recording it”).
Research references that touch these topics. The list you compiled will serve as research reference: which artists or art works exist that touch your aesthetics, semantics or process? This research works better the more you know about art history (including contemporary and emerging art) – but even if you don’t know too much yet, the process of researching will naturally increase your knowledge.
You might find works that touch your aesthetics, but happen in a different medium: can this teach you a new angle about your own work? What texts (books, magazines), videos, podcasts or movies exist about your topics? You want to go ever deeper into the rabbit hole of your work, to enclose yourself within the world you created. You want to become an expert of your work.
Understand (rationally and/or emotionally) which topics to deepen further. The idea of this research is to find previously undiscovered, potential paths. You’ll never be able to pursue them all, but that’s not the point: rather, the goal is to deepen your understanding of your work.

Note that you don’t need to do these steps on your own, but can also discuss them with others. If you feel uncomfortable showing your work, you can investigate your work on your own, to only then start a discussion with someone else – based on your description. This lets you keep your work under the hood, while approaching others with a list of reference topics (those compiled in step 1). Some will find it easier to ask “Which artists worked with yarn?”, “Which artists use fire?”, “Which artists used heat-sensitive cameras?” than to show their work – especially if it’s unfinished, or if you don’t yet know whether you trust your dialog partner’s judgements or sensitivities.

My work feels alien, raw and unstable. It makes me feel uneasy and worried. Should I still pursue it?

People love comfort zones. They offer low levels of stress and anxiety, and represent temporary safe havens. While being in constant comfort might sound perfect, it also includes the risks of boredom and stagnation; in the right amounts, anxiety can actually improve one’s performance. Since art strives towards the unknown and unestablished, artists need to find realistic ways to be exploratory and productive.

In the best case, exposure to unknowns would let you thrive: your courage would increase, and your life would become larger and less vulnerable. Reality is often different: departing from established routes can make you feel alien. That’s weird, since pursuing individual standards is an essential human trait: how to dress, what music to listen to, how to dance or talk or think – how to live and be. Yet humans also want to belong and feel embedded. The conflict between one’s individuality and social attachments requires self-empathy, and knowledge about one’s deepest hopes and fears: do you feel loved and appreciated? Why not? What are the sources of your worries? The challenge is to balance one’s individuality (one’s need for personal expression) with one’s needs for external appreciation (one’s need for belonging). This topic touches deeply: it represents another aspect of your lifelong quest to find a place in the world, and to understand what it might mean to be ourselves.

What aesthetics you pursue (“Yes, I really wanted to install the work like this!”) and enjoy (“Yes, I loved that movie, even though you didn’t!”), what tools you use and how you use them, which materials and semantics you focus: the more you pursue standard, established processes, the more aligned you might be with public tastes. The more you deviate, the less you might be understood by the general public; yet the more appreciation you might receive from society’s avant-garde. Even though today’s world is more diverse than ever before, there are endless unwritten rules on what’s right and what’s wrong, and what codes to follow – differing by individuals and sub-group. You might realize that your way of being isn’t compatible with the people whose attention you crave. In addition, creating work that feels deviant and new to you, doesn’t imply it feels like that to your surroundings: instead, it might say more about your lacking knowledge of art history and pop culture, which can feel diminishing on yet another level. The only way to get through this is to stay radically open-minded towards knowledge transfer, and to breathe in all of society’s past, current and future offerings.

Yes, you want to pursue exactly what makes you feel uneasy. To an art practice’s curious apprentice (a status we should never abandon), there can’t be stupid questions, and nothing can be alien or unstable enough. It’s mostly ego or fear that hold you back, that let you refrain from experiments. Yet feeling uneasy is predominantly a sign of needing further information about your work and what it could be, if you only followed through with it for some more weeks or months. Maybe you’re lacking knowledge about how to position it for others. Maybe you’re overworked and don’t see what’s right in front of you.

Imagine a process that would never feel alien, wouldn’t ever feel raw or unstable; a process that would always feel easy and worry-free: while this might sound magical to someone who’s stressed and anxious, it would represent the one thing that artists usually can’t afford long-term: stagnation.

Contemporary art is complex and scary. How can others help me find my way?

Since contemporary art is a platform for almost any personal expression, there cannot easily be general guidelines or expectations on what an artist should do: your art can be whatever you want it to be – which is both potential and burden, especially to beginners. What to do, and how, and why? Everyone needs to find their own answers to these questions, which is why students and emerging artists usually need years to understand their terrain: themselves, their output, and other people’s resonance. While some will love the inherent openness, the guideless exploration of artistic processes, others will feel overwhelmed by too many possibilities. Your artistic practice can feel like a sea, with you in the middle, and no land in sight. Murky. What direction to swim to? It’s these feelings that let us look for external support – through books, conversations, art school, etc. But can others help you find your way?

We understand the world by naming it; writing or talking about our experience allows us to analyze and interpret it. We might not have a solution, but we are beginning to tackle the problem. This helps us to develop ever more refined opinions about the world – whether in our personal lives or our art practice. The more we engage in discussions about our ideas, the more we get to listen to other people’s ideas in return. This enriches us, since we get to experience how others understand and name the world. In the best of cases, a mutual, respectful exchange of experiences is enriching to all participants. Yet a lot of people aren’t particularly respectful or sensitive. Interacting with them can become a burden, or have hidden costs; this creates new challenges: we want advice, and might actually receive it – but can we trust someone else to know what we actually need? And since it might have been ourselves that asked for help: can we even trust ourselves to know what we want, and whom to ask for support?

Most people want support when they start out: we don’t understand the standards and histories of our tools and media, and have few clues about anything. Yet the further we progress, the more we will usually want to deviate from standards: after all, art is ultimately about your individual expression – how well will general standards express them? Growing as an artist thus requires us to dissent; to deviate from advice and established norms. The terrain in which we operate is not originally defined by us; rather, it’s the end result of those preceding artists whose footsteps we follow (and expand). Understanding our terrain thus often requires us to dive deep into the work of other artists first – but we need to detach eventually. We need to pursue ourselves. The more we were looking for external advice and validation, the harder we might later have to establish ourselves as authority in our work. The more we let others tell us what to do (and what not to do), the more we let others define what’s good and bad, the harder we will later be challenged by our lack of authority. In the worst case, you create a situation where you strive for external validation of whoever you ask for advice – without following your own trail. In school situations this might feel to be valuable – but once you leave their hierarchy and safety, you’re lost once more, and in a harsher setting: instead of being a dependent student, you’d now be a graduate without authority over their work.

Consider the following when seeking external validation and advice for your work practice:

Maintain creative authority: When you ask for advice or support, you need to be sensitive to (a) your urge to transfer authority to whomever you’re talking to (after all, someone else might know better, or, in the case of a teacher, might actually know “best”), and (b) their urge to demand or implement authority over your work. You might want to know why a drawing doesn’t feature the rhythm you were aiming for – is the ensuing conversation actually discussing this?
Understand that asking for advice should never entail transfer of work authority: you usually want to increase knowledge of standards (how to weld, how to clean a brush, how to sand stone, etc), to eventually be able to decide whether to use or deviate from them. The more complex the topic, the more challenging it can be to understand your own voice within the expectations of standards: understanding painting compositions, film editing or mastering a choreography thus are prone to external advice that might sound legitimate, but might also strongly intervene with your artistic vision.
Investigate your urge for advice: The more you feel lost, the more you might want support and validation, and might welcome strong opinions (“Do this! Don’t do that!”). This risks prematurely diminishing the ambiguities, and thus the potentials of art. Artists need to develop their tastes and preferences; the stronger these are refined, the more likely they might want to apply them even to other people’s work. Yet applying one’s tastes to someone else’s work, especially when asked for help, rarely is sensitive. Instead, it usually leads to misunderstandings and frustrations. That’s why the stronger someone tells you what’s right and wrong in your artistic processes, the more worried you should generally be. The more you should question their intention.
Good advice tends to acknowledge you and your situation: Good teachers support their students in exploration according to your own capabilities. When someone criticizes you (positively or negatively), always ask yourself whether they know you, know who you are, and what you want to achieve. The less they’re interested in you, the less they are able to offer individualized feedback. If they euphemize this by mentioning the purity of art, take special care: there is nothing more pure than humans; an advisor discussing art to be of higher value than you, might be more fascist than is healthy. They might care about the topic (and themselves), but not about the subtleties of your work, or you.
The obvious exceptions are works of art that are racist, sexist, or otherwise intentionally evil: it’s human to not want to get into the details of them, but to simply disregard them and their surroundings.
Understand the dangers of discrimination (against specific tools, processes, semantics) in exploratory processes: Independent of their intention, people’s opinions and advice discriminate; they define what intentions, processes, semantics or tools are valuable, and which ones’ aren’t. This is exactly why people who feel lost, turn to others for advice: when we’re lost, we want to be shown the right path, and want the wrong path to be discriminated against. A guide (whether a person, or a book like this one) is wanted exactly for its discriminatory capacity: against dead-ends, energy vampires, outdated ideas etc. A guide is expected to discriminate against what’s bad. Yet in art, who can know what’s bad? More specifically, who can know what’s bad for you?

What you’d want most (strong opinions) is usually not what you should be given. In a murky sea of possibilities, you might think to want direction. But if that is offered, it shouldn’t be through strong opinions. It should be through advice that helps you find yourself, and your way forward: through encouragement and respect, and tools that enable introspection and self-assurance, and an increasingly personal mode of operation – both in creating and discussing your work. Advice and support should be aimed to increase your knowledge about the topic’s complexities, so that you can find your own tastes within them, and thus ultimately strengthen your own voice.

When in darkness, of course we look for light. In case of desperation on behalf of the artist, this situation has relevant pitfalls though: other people’s opinions might be seen (or posed) as canonic, as pure – where they obviously can’t be more (or less) than the result of that other person’s individual experiences, hopes and dreams. Other people are essential to our progress. We depend on their input to get to mastery (and beyond). But since the pure darkness of lacking knowledge also makes us vulnerable to negative influences, it’s important to understand that ultimately, no one can help you to find your voice. People can support your path, but it’s you who needs to want to pursue it. The peak of the mountain that is you, can only be climbed by you.

Imagine yourself as small, tiny light in utter darkness; while you might feel irrelevant, that small light is yours alone. It’s not nothing. It’s a beginning. In theory, you can modify it in any way, without having to rely on other people’s judgement: this moment of individuality is the soul of all art. We might fear to increase our brightness; after all, it might show us parts of ourselves that we aren’t really happy about. Some of us small lights would at times love to be within the safe boundaries of a stronger light: teachers, more successful artists, gatekeepers, friends. Yet if you continuously stay in someone else’s cone of light, it will be impossible to understand your own light, yourself: you can’t shine in situations made bright by others.

How do I find gallery representation?

Artists don’t require gallery collaborations or representations – they can establish successful, perfectly satisfied lives on their own. Nevertheless, most artists dream of the possibilities that emerge from gallery collaborations; they signify art world appreciation, and prestige by association. In this way, galleries symbolize hope: for increased visibility and sales, for an expanded network of gatekeepers, and for being able to more fully focus one’s artistic practice. How then to find a gallery, when they differ so drastically from one another, and are generally understood to be so highly unapproachable?

The basic strategy to find a gallery requires knowledge about your work, and about the gallery’s focus:

Have a presentable body of work: You need to have a concise body of work in order to be interesting to a gallery. This doesn’t mean that you should show your work or portfolio when visiting the gallery; rather, consider it as the general prerequisite for gallery collaborations. Note that establishing gallery relations does not require you to already have a full body of work: solid relations are usually built on the feelings, energies and unique compatibilities between humans – not the judgements of art. You can start building relations to galleries today, and it will likely help you down the road, when you feel more confident about your work.
Understand your work, and be able to discuss it: Pursuing your art practice throughout the years usually results in you having a good understanding of its characteristics. This should help you in discussing your work in various depths: what’s the one-sentence-description that you feel comfortable with, but doesn’t feel like a sales pitch. What is your work about, what art historical or contemporary references are relevant for you and your work. This knowledge can be your basis for conversations surrounding the gallery courting phase; while you’re unlikely to have such conversations right away, understanding your work and being able to discuss it with ease will send the right signals to gallery directors once they are curious about you. Understand that a deep knowledge of your work doesn’t mean that you should push it into conversations; but being well-prepared allows you to drop information when the conversation’s flow leads to it.
Understand the gallery in question: You need both a general understanding of galleries, and a specific understanding of the gallery in question. How do galleries work, and how does this specific gallery compare to that? What fairs does the gallery attend, what sort of artists are represented there (emerging, established, deceased); is there a specific semantic or media focus (performance, photography, figuration, abstraction etc), what price level do they operate in, what sort of clientele do they attract, how well-presented are the shows there, etc. Understanding a gallery lets you put your work in context: would it be a good fit? If so, it makes sense to try to establish a deeper connection with the gallery staff.

To better understand a gallery, visit them with the sole intention to check out their space and current exhibition – not to initiate contact. This relieves you of the pressure to act (and be judged), resulting in an atmosphere where it’s you that can judge (the exhibition, the display, the works, etc) – where you’re in some sort of power. Whenever you visit a gallery, consider their expectations upon seeing a stranger entering their business: in the best of cases, you might be a new customer. Wanting to highlight or discuss your work can quickly make you a nuisance, with energies immediately being imbalanced. If you instead repeatedly visit them over a year, to see their shows outside of the openings, they’re bound to notice your curiosity.

The basic strategy to approach a gallery depends on whether you’re already represented or not:

If you’re already represented: Contact your gallery and ask them about the gallery you’d like to get in touch. Is there an existing connection that lets the gallery reach out with ease? Do both galleries attend similar art fairs or other industry events? Does someone of your galleries’ closer network know someone at the aspired gallery? Find out whether an organic way of contacting the new gallery is feasible – eg. through a mutual curatorial project, a joint booth at an art fair, etc.
If you’re not yet represented: Establish organic ways of connecting to the gallery staff – by visiting their openings, artist talks, project openings etc. Instead of expecting quick results, you need to understand these steps as part of a courting phase that can easily take more than a year. While frustratingly slow to some, this phase lets you understand, compare and judge the galleries in question. You will get to see the differences in emotionality and professionalism, and get to know their closer surroundings; attending gallery events also enables you to connect to artists and gatekeepers, which in itself can be rewarding; they might tell you about the gallery, or even become collaborators or friends.

Your goal is to raise awareness of you and your work, ideally without being pushy. Resist the urge to contact the gallery directly (by sending an email, or visiting it in their office hours, to hand over a portfolio to the gallery director or staff). While doing so might sound pragmatic, it also shows your desperation, and lack of knowledge about etiquette and implicit industry standards. Courting is a dance that can rarely be skipped. Once a gallery is curious, it will find ways to see your work: the challenge is to spark their curiosity.

Understand that no matter how close you get, no matter how strong your urge to collaborate, galleries might have no interest: they might have enough artists already, might be downsizing, might not like your work, might not like you, might not see its economic feasibility for their current context, might see your work as too similar to another one of their artist’s work, or too distant from what they do. If you experience disinterest in basic conversations (no curiosity whatsoever), then it will likely be smart to accept this as rejection. You can still stay in touch and visit their shows, since this will strengthen your network: it’s good to know people. But don’t sulk: as in unrealized love relationships, you have to look further. If your dream about a collaboration simply isn’t per se founded in the reality of mutual business interests, there’s little you can do. Always remember: there are many other galleries out there to explore and connect to – but the ratio of artists to galleries is extremely uneven: it’s impossible for every artist to be represented.

How do I start?

You start making art by embracing an exploratory mindset, which helps you to investigate the potential quality ideals of your work.

Starting something can be both magical and frightening: beginnings require us to transcend our fear of failure. They let our hopes for success meet the realities of our abilities, and of our willpower: sometimes doubts win, and we stop before ever having begun. Beginnings can be complex – you might not know what to do, how to go about it, or even why you’re getting started. Your actions might become a beginning, without you yet being aware of it.

Beginnings are a frequent challenge for artists, maybe more so than for others: entering a new project with unknown parameters, a collaboration with unclear outcomes. Kicking off a new medium, starting one’s first sculpture ever, or a new series after the previous one didn’t resonate with others. Apart from curiosity and a certain willfulness or giddiness, beginnings require hope – and the belief that we can be more than we are right now. They are quintessentially human.

Beginnings require hope, and the belief that we can be more than we are right now. They are quintessentially human.

The beginnings of artistic processes can be unexpectedly erratic, since they can’t rely on external quality ideals – processes can legitimately begin without knowing where they are meant to go. These quality ideals can exist upfront (as the result of previous artistic interrogations, or general personal semantic or aesthetic preferences), or have to be established while pursuing the process, resulting in them often being inherently experimental. The notion of artistic processes having to be experimental is so normative to some, that sometimes an artist’s authenticity is judged by it: if your art is visually similar to your previous work, or that of other artists, it might be seen as inauthentic (“You’re just copying yourself!” or “You’re just copying others, instead of pursuing your own vision! Art is only art if its processes are unstable!”). This can lead to artists feeling self-conscious once their processes become more established and stable – as if there’s only merit in the pursuit of unknowns. The actuality is that the art making process has different phases: some more experimental, some more production-oriented. Both are necessary.

Artistic processes often don’t have a clear sequence of steps to pursue; there might be knowledge about tools and materials, but little absolutes about how to reach the goal (which doesn’t need to be defined upfront). With neither processes nor goals being clearly defined, artistic processes often start radically erratic and open-minded, and can benefit from a certain naivety. How to ever get somewhere this way?

Exploratory Processes

Many creative processes follow a predefined, sequential formula (“do this, then that, then that, ..”); they offer a sequence, and thus guideline, within which creativity (and thus personal choice) finds room. In the arts however, there often is neither sequence nor guideline – the processes can be more fundamentally open and exploratory: you can draw a figure or an abstraction on your piece of paper, or you can fold the paper, or rip it apart, or burn it and create work out of its ashes. You can draw a figure on paper, but focus on the pencil being used up (and not what you were drawing).

Exploratory artistic processes need to establish what they are about, and how they go about it. In the case of process-oriented artistic practices, this pursuit can even represent the goal, with a specific end condition being used instead of otherwise defined quality criteria: a certain time having passed, materials having being consumed, etc. These practices ultimately don’t need anything but the urge to start: one can doodle and experiment freely, to end whenever it feels right. For goal-oriented practices, the artist needs to develop some sort of understanding of where to get to, and how to get there. For production phases, one would usually want to know both these aspects; for exploratory phases, one ultimately needs neither: it suffices to get going, and stay sensitive towards one semantic and aesthetic ideas.

Various Process Modes — Formula-, process- and goal-based processes

Finishing and Quality Criteria

Finishing something requires you to understand and reach that thing’s finish line – which in arts is represented by your quality ideals: when does a painting, a sculpture, a novel, a dance fulfill the various criteria that you require of it? These quality criteria can be aesthetic (“A blue sun has been sculpted in a way that’s pleasing to me”) or conceptual (“Thirteen body movements have been made between 6:07 and 7:06pm”) – offering endless potential for confusion to laypeople. This is made even more volatile by quality ideals not only being highly personal, but also being subject to time: a specific variation of a sculpted blue sun might look beautifully complete to Artist A, but decidedly worthless to Artist B; these personal points of view do not stand in conflict with each other (although certain people will, antagonistically, lecture others about which quality criteria they feel to be “right”), since everyone is ultimately required to have their own ideas about what’s finished or good – it serves as the basis for contemporary arts’ endless multitude of quality ideals and works. In addition, an artist’s ideas about finishedness and perfection don’t have to be consistent over time, but can vary in extreme ways.

Volatile Quality Criteria in Art — Quality criteria usually change over time (Artist A), and between people (Artist A vs. Artist B)

It’s possible to finish an artwork even if you don’t understand whether it’s done – you can simply decide that you’ll leave it where it stands. If you don’t understand your quality ideals, you cannot know whether your current work satisfies them; you need to start interrogating (this might be the case because you are new at making art, or because you are experienced, but enter a new medium or concept where your ideals don’t feel adequate). You do so by embedding yourself in the processes of creation: either by using the tools and materials (pencil, hammer, your tablet, etc.), or by conceptualizing your quality ideals theoretically (“I want bold lines and large canvases”, “I want fragility mixed with cheekiness”, etc.) – or both. You increase your sensitivity and your judgment.

Over time, this fills the initially empty pot of quality with purpose and intent. Your ideas about a work’s (potential and actual) quality ideals will emerge from being immersed: you understand them because you focus, and experiment with your decisions. Before this can happen though, one has to begin – potentially without yet being able to properly understand where to go. This isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds; it’s like hiking with the intention to explore, which requires you to stay attentive and calm, and to carry on. You start without compass or map – but by walking, you get a better understanding of the territory, and the many options you have. Your walking becomes compass and map. You aren’t an explorer because you reach a goal; you are an explorer because you explore. Art requires a lot of this – it enables you to understand the territory, and your place(s) within it. You will get to judge which views you enjoy better than others, which in turn will give you moments of joy. The more of them you have, the better your life will often feel. Yet having a view at all starts with your first step: the beginning.

While it’s impossible to finish a work with unclear quality criteria, it’s absolutely possible to start working on it. Quality is a vacuum, which can eventually be replaced with purpose and intent. Quality can emerge from exposure to, and being embedded in a process. Before this can happen though, one has to begin – potentially without yet being able to properly understand where to go. This isn’t a bad situation – it’s like hiking to get somewhere unknown: you can’t get there without starting off, even though you might not always know whether the direction makes sense. You start without a compass or map – but by walking, you get a better understanding of the territory, and where it all might lead to. Your walking becomes compass and map. You aren’t a hiker because you reach a goal; you are a hiker because you hike. Art requires a lot of wandering – the more you can set up processes whose views you enjoy, the better your life will be. Having a view at all starts with your first step: the beginning.

In an open field like art, it can be hard to understand why to choose any specific direction over another – all of them are possible, and often mean the same to a beginner. There’s just not a strong compass yet. To establish one, consider using the following 3-tier structure:

Consider reading the chapters for a detailed discussion of each of these topics.

What are the benefits of finishing an artwork?

With all the challenges connected to finishing, why would one ever want to finish an artwork? The answer is rather straight-forward: because finishing can open your mind to the consequences of your creation. It marks the beginning of the next phase of your artwork’s life cycle: the one where it can exist independently of you. This enables dialogs beyond your control, which ultimately might feed back to you, and thus into your artistic practice: for an artist, finishing an artwork generates knowledge.

Consider the benefits of finishing:

Finishing is a natural part of progressing: While finishing isn’t the logical consequence of having started, it’s still a natural (although optional) part of progressing – it lets you open your ideas to (internal and external) judgement. If you’re afraid of feedback, consider yourself within the larger process of progressing as an artist. Each step on this path is a step forward – independently of whether you think of it as success or failure.

While a finished artwork represents the extreme limitations of your physical abilities and your (rational and subconscious) choices, it still isn’t a closed or finite; just like beginnings, it represents hope: the hope to one day become a better artist, the hope for others to like, enjoy, understand and connect to it; the hope of contributing to the medium we work in; the hope of selling the piece.

Finishing enables the work to exist without you: Although we’re used to experiencing unfinished works (when visiting a studio or following someone’s progress on social media), it’s the finished pieces that are usually meant to go public. By finishing a piece, it can enter the next part of its life cycle – to be experienced, exhibited, and potentially bought. It can become the focus of criticism and adoration, of countless dialogs about its content and form. Most of all, it can exist autonomously: it doesn’t require it’s author anymore.
Finishing generates knowledge: A finished work can be a platform – for others to experience and to engage in a dialog with. It enables discussions about its genesis, its physicality, its content and form; your intentions and missteps, and the potential randomness that led to it. It manifests your quality ideals. All of these can help you to raise your awareness about yourself and your work practice, and the eternal gap between idea and manifestation; a finished work increases your knowledge about your place in the world.
Finishing can empower you: Finishing lets you judge not only your experiments, but your judgement as a whole. This makes it a unique tool for personal growth; not just to experience your inabilities, but to increase the courage required to present your efforts to the world. It can help to establish your voice.
Finishing allows your work to be bought: Buying art doesn’t necessarily require physical goods; one can buy intellectual properties or reproduction rights just as well. However, the most common financial transaction on the art market still is the collecting of physical artworks – for which finished works are usually wanted. Physical media like drawing, painting, sculpting or photography intrinsically allow for the creation of finished physical works, and thus are the most common objects for art sales. Physical works are so normative that even process-based artists (using media like performance or dance) often produce physical goods in order to be have sellable products (photos or videos of their performances, or physical parts of the performance, etc).
Understand finishing as part of continuing: Analyzing your finished work can help you understand how to to continue. Apart from increasing awareness of your artistic choices and style, this enables you to formulate multiple relevant answers to the same formal or semantic question. This can be empowering, since it creates comparison criteria within your work, and allows for alternatives to whatever sparked the initial work.

Check out the chapters about the anatomy of finishing, and the challenges of finishing.