Artistic Practice – A Handbook for Emerging Artists

Why is artmaking challenging?

The idea of self-expression is ingrained deeply in contemporary artmaking – it’s normative to the point of being understood as defining privilege of, but also as core expectation towards artists: to express the personal, so that the group (society) can grasp something universal. This represents an emotional challenge that artists need to face, and ultimately solve: to foster the personal and to make visible their individuality, in a society that tends to reward whatever is predefined, established, normative and uniform.

As the authors of “Art & Fear” highlight, survival evolutionarily required us to be part of a group (“Nature places a simple constraint on those who leave the flock to go their own way: they get eaten.”, p68): to be cast out of a group meant death: no food, no protection, no warmth. To have an opinion, to be a self, always risks opposing the group’s opinion(s) – it risks being cast out of the group. Evolutionarily, having a personal opinion risks death. In some societies, this is still true today. At the same time it’s essential to have an opinion, and to become visible; our works need to be seen to spark resonance, to find collectors.

Self-expression can be scarier than dying, because it is an actuality that you can experience every day.

The evolutionary fear of death (by being cast out of a group) might feel very distant: most of us will not die because of our artmaking. The fear of other people’s opinions is real though; one could argue that visibility might create more stress and anxiety than the abstract idea of death. Becoming visible for what you create is an actual reality that you can face every time you show your work to a friend, exhibit, or simply post about it on social media. This is a weird conundrum: that the normative aspect of artmaking, the artist’s self-expression, is admired by society – but can represent the artist’s deepest fears and challenge: self-expression can be scarier than dying, because it is an actuality that you can experience every day.

The way through is to embrace experimentation – to experiment with self-expression, and investigate which aspects of creation resonate within you – and how: what do specific materials, physical dimensions, aesthetics and semantics mean to you, and to experience your humanity within this experimentation. Not to expect yourself to succeed, but to know and accept that you’ll fail. Over time, this will let you become more courageous, and less precious – which will make you free. This way, your artmaking becomes another tool towards conscious freedom. First for yourself, then for the peers that experience it – then for the world.

Why is artmaking challenging? Because it requires you to confront not just yourself, but also deep evolutionary fears that arise as consequence of becoming an individual.

What’s the anatomy of creating an artwork? (a deep dive into contemporary artmaking)

The beginning of artmaking is often marked by a deep curiosity about tools: how does the stroke of a pencil lead to a line; how does the sharpened wood of a pencil smell; how do different textures of paper feel like. Artists need to understand how to use their tools and media, but also what these tools and media mean to them; specifically, this includes increasing their awareness and understanding of the oftentimes complex emotional, haptical and somatic connections they have towards them. Everyone has their own approach towards an artistic medium – no two people use a pencil the same way, see a sculpture exactly with the same focus, have the same emotions or associations towards eg. the texture of a specific kind of paper. Already on the level of material, our takes on the universe differ – which is why improving our sensitivities towards the unique relationships within them matter so much. There cannot be a general way of using tools or artistic media: understanding our individual approach towards them requires introspection; we need to deepen the relationship with ourselves.

From tools to craft

Our curiosity about tools usually leads to (or is accompanied by) a curiosity about craft: how to depict, how to abstract, how to use them towards the goals we desire. Craft is an essence of artmaking, and is entirely personal – it’s your knowledge of the tools you use, and your relationship towards them. Craft is infinite: you cannot “finish” studying these relationships. In addition, craft offers the fantasy of comparison; the false hope that you could compare your abilities to those of others. If it were true, you might be able to become “better” than someone else. These sorts of comparisons are inherent to capitalism, and often seen as a motivational force. Artists can fall into this trap just like anyone else: “If I were better, or the best, then by merely focusing on craft, my work might become visible, and, who knows, collected and accepted”.

Art as transgenerational dialog that benefits from diversity

It doesn’t work like that though, since art isn’t a competition – but a transgenerational dialog benefiting from diversity: your voice is relevant only because of the other voices in the field – past, present and future. Voices and identities and cultures and realities you will never know or comprehend. There’s no goal to reach, but a process to pursue; ultimately, this process can become your goal: not to quit. To keep making art. Whatever increases the chances of your continued artmaking, is good – or even essential. If your focus on craft empowers you, then it’s worthwhile. At the same time, understand (the risky psychological benefits of) craft as a hiding place: you can keep increasing your focus on it, but still never reach the “true territory” of artmaking – because while art has craft as an essential base, it can only ever be a starting point for what art actually is about: meaning.

From craft stagnation to your passions, and your mind

So you focus on craft, because it helps you to focus on artmaking. You keep improving, and experience both progress and stagnation – both being inherent aspects of growth. You will establish plateaus of knowledge where further progress might feel distant. If this leads to your work feeling stale or boring, and you experience yourself repeating the same motions, then it might be a good time to sidestep craft, and consider what to actually do with it – with this deep emotional, haptical and somatic knowledge you established.

You are human before you’re an artist.

You are human before you’re an artist; and as a fellow human with passions, curiosities, joys and fears, there’s something that moves you beside your focus on art and on craft. That “something” is what life is about – and what art is about. While craft can help you transform your vision into reality, it can in itself feel hollow. Knowledge and application of craft often need meaning beside themselves, to transcend emptiness. This is reinforced by contemporary art empowering any mode or depth of craft – the crudest aesthetics are finally understood to be just as relevant as the most refined and elegant: you don’t necessarily ever need to increase craft, to focus on meaning. While craft is essential, it’s also a lie. The only actual craft that artists need, is meta – and about attitude: to increase their understanding of what they want to do. To transcend doubt. To create. Seen this way, the only tool required to artmaking is the artist’s mind.

Art and meaning

Understanding potential domains of your artmaking practice is mostly a mental activity. Interrogating what’s meaningful to you could lead to focusing on your emotions about tools and the media you use (at times, your focus on craft can feel to be the only thing that matters to you), or on specific aspects of your artistic practice. It might also focus on the aspects of life that you care about – which will usually be entirely independent of your art practice. These topics that you care about, and your individual, specific way of caring about them, are as unique as the way you hold your brush, as unique as you see and experience the world. Connecting your artistic practice, your craft, with the topics you care about is one of the most gratifying, personal, and courageous things that artists can do. It’s the difference between reading books and learning to speak, to the courage of phrasing a sentence that speaks your mind. It lets your voice become real. It creates your artistic identity.

To interrogate meaning, you can put your haptic, craft-based tools aside. Instead of creating the next craft-based work, try to see craft (also) as a potential medium of avoidance – an avoidance of vulnerability. While there is vulnerability involved in learning craft (“It’s so embarrassing how I can’t get this thing right”), it is usually way easier on you than creating work that pursues (and physically manifests) your actual passions. To interrogate meaning, consider doing the following:

Interrogate your passions: create a list of topics you’re passionate about. Then
Consider which of these topics you want (or need) to connect to artistically. Then
Think about how to do so: in regards to colors, forms, and potentially also in regards to your previous artworks.

Each of these steps can take days, or could be done within a couple of minutes. The duration of your focus isn’t important – what’s relevant is that you keep returning to this process of interrogation. It’s a process that will accompany you throughout your entire life. It will set you on a path of discovery that will at times be far outside of your comfort zone. It will be scary – but will also offer rewards beyond expectations.

A thought about art and nihilism

Some experience contemporary art as a field without values – as nihilistic. This often is the consequence of contemporary art offering such an unusual openness in regards to the use of materials and media, and the breadth of topics. While some experience this as true freedom, others only see a wasteland that feels hollow and meaningless: can there be meaning, if anything is possible? Of course there can be – meaning isn’t limited, and contemporary art reflects that; artists can use any mode of operation to express their topics.

Yet the more open a field, the more courage can be required to do something specific – and art benefits from being specific, even if the specificity focuses on randomness (to create a truly random work requires highly dedicated specificity). As a field with entirely open values, art is inherently the opposite of nihilistic – something with values cannot be nihilistic.

Understanding your creations (1/2): Create one artwork

The creation of physical works is the phase that follows conceptualization, at least if artmaking would be a linear process – it often isn’t. In such an idealized linear process, the next step would be to actually create work that tries to fulfill the criteria set above. Creating artworks is stereotypically understood to be the core aspect of artmaking. Symbolically speaking, it’s where you begin to exist (as an artist). In actuality, it’s difficult to understand the thresholds of artmaking – conceptualizing an artwork surely also fulfills the criteria of artmaking, even if the processes might only have happened in your mind.

It’s essential to eventually manifest your ideas physically, because it enables you to understand the actuality of your creations, which will often be far from the elegant fantasies you might have had about them. A creation can only be one thing; it is the opposite of infinity. It is the consequence of a multitude of decisions, conscious and subconscious, which accumulated in the creation of this specific artwork. While interpretations of this artwork might be infinite, the specific artwork itself is finite and specifically as it is. This can be a challenge for your ego. It can be humbling: “Out of all potentials, this is what I ended up creating?” It can help to see art as a process of approximation: to ever get closer, throughout your life, to manifesting your vision. This lets each of your creations exist as something “more” than merely being a result: it lets it mark the continuation of your artistic journey – a process that will last as long as you live.

Understanding your creations (2/2): Create more than one artwork

Having created work enables interrogation and analysis. It enables you to ask questions like “How do you feel about it now? How do aesthetics and semantics connect?” To better understand what you think and feel about a piece, consider creating more than just one work, under the same criteria. Where a single piece will be the consequence of random choices, a multitude of works empowers you in judging this “style” – with style now denoting a mixture of aesthetics and semantics. Understand that this sequence of work doesn’t have to be a “work series”: where a work series often refers to visual repetition, a sequence of works is more open-minded, and includes works that might focus on a specific topic (eg. political paintings). Each of these might exist as a separate visual universe, and focus on a different political topic. To create a work sequence, consider doing the following:

Interrogate the work you want to expand on: how is it defined? What are its essential qualities? It could be the specific use of tools, the physical format, the duration of a piece, the number of protagonists or movements within a performance, the choice and/or saturation of color, a modulation in frequency, the amount of figures or abstractions within a composition. It will likely also include semantic aspects like the chosen topic(s), and how to try to get them across. The essential quality could be entirely semantic, and not care about aesthetics, or it could include details whether eg. depicted figures have their eyes closed, look at (or away from) each other, etc.
This interrogation can be speculative – you might not yet understand what is essential to defining the work in front of you. Understand this process as another craft to improve over your lifetime, and keep returning to it. It will help you to gradually discover new aspects of your creations.
Create a list of essential qualities: Using the findings of your previous interrogation, create a list of those work qualities that feel the most relevant to you right now. It can be beneficial to limit yourself to 5-10 of these, and create a second list that includes non-essential qualities. Now
Create a specific number of artworks that fulfill these allegedly essential qualities. Having defined a list of essential qualities, you now create work that tries to fulfill them. You can define upfront how many pieces you aim to create (eg. five, seven or twelve artworks), or you simply decide this along the way, as you keep finishing new works. Actually creating these works will be accompanied by your continuous judgment of whether your interrogation and analysis were “correct”. You will realize that your some things were less important than you thought, while others are ultimately more relevant than you thought.

On this path of creating work, it’s OK to have doubts. It’s OK for you to wonder whether what you’re doing is actually worth your time. These thoughts and feelings are part of your process of becoming an artist. How you deal with them is part of your personality – both as human and artist. Creating these works is the consequence of something uniquely personal, and thus vulnerable: your topics, your passions, your way of using tools, media and craft – your way of not just seeing, but now also adding to the world.
Judge the new works. You will come to a point where this interrogation-by-creation will feel finished. This enables you to judge the work (and the entire sequence of works), and compare them to the list of essential qualities defined beforehand. How do they compare? What did you learn?

Approaching the creation process like this results in having created something “complete”, something that tends to have strong degrees of self-explanatory power. We are often better able to understand, relate and judge a sequence of works, than single pieces – maybe because the contextual repetition aids our understanding. In addition though, a work sequence enables you to document and/or exhibit it. It can mark the first, or another, chapter in your artistic life.

Each of the works in the sequence will have unique aspects that aren’t shared by the other pieces. You can repeat the interrogation process for each of these works or ideas, resulting in your art not only being fed by your external passions, but also by the work you created thus far. It lets your work archive become a recursive platform of self-interrogation.

To understand what to do artistically, investigate your mind, and you will transcend stagnating on craft.

How do I create an art portfolio, to use for art school or gallery applications?

A portfolio is a document that tries to capture the spirit of you and your work. It’s like waving hello to a stranger — to someone who usually hasn’t met you before. Your portfolio is the answer to a very specific question: “How can I best guide a stranger into my universe?“. Although seemingly basic, this question can require a lot of sensitivity, and benefits from increasing mastering of your work’s infinite complexities.

Consider the following key strategies:

Understand portfolio creation as a life-long, recurring process. Your portfolio is the reflection of something dynamic: of you and your work. Both offer infinite interpretations and categorizations — as a result, there can not be a final, ultimate version of a portfolio; your ideas about your work will simply keep changing, as part of your growth into the art world, and as a consequence of your personal growth over time. That’s why it makes sense to understand the task of updating (or re-creating) your portfolio as recurring and unending, just like doing dishes: you can never ultimately be done.
Understand your portfolio as a service. Services can be executed incredibly well, or rather luke-warm. Some services are functionally complete, but emotionally empty — we easily understand how service qualities differ in everyday encounters, how appreciative or lackluster we are being treated: make sure that your “service of portfolio” doesn’t add to the staleness of the world.
If your portfolio is a service to introduce strangers to your universe, then it cannot simply be a list of works, with your name on the title page. Instead, it makes sense to ask yourself how to improve your service; to include an artist statement at the beginning, or a narrative CV or even a portrait photo of yourself at the end, as your way of saying “hello” and “goodbye”. It will usually benefit from your works being categorized into work series or artistic media, with an explanation of the series’ contexts accompanying it.
Understand your portfolio as a new medium – one of art mediation. You might already be very good at explaining your work to guests in the studio, or might have a proper website highlighting your work. With each medium working differently though, you need to figure out how this “medium of portfolio” can be tamed to best represent your vision; how to both firmly and sensitively guide that unknown stranger into your world. As a new medium, consider analyzing other people’s approaches to their portfolio – and always remember your creative strength: if you are capable of creating art, you will have enough creativity to create an amazing portfolio just as well. Different to art creation though, art mediation requires answers to the question of how to best discuss your work; how not to trivialize or be grandiose about it.
Your portfolio most often shouldn’t be a vertical list of works – it shouldn’t be understood as a text document with images. Instead, consider seeing it as a presentation (consisting of slides) or a short book, where already the page orientation (portrait or landscape) should be done intentionally.
Never delete your portfolio(s). Even if you understand your portfolio as a living, breathing service medium, it can be challenging to understand how to improve its quality. Some changes towards excellence can require drastic changes, which might feel emotionally challenging – because who knows, your existing portfolio might be better than you yet understand.
A good strategy to solve this is to keep all versions of your portfolio – to not delete your source files. This enables you to always step back to any previous version, and removes worries or preciousness about changes – even in the case of drastic reconstructions. In addition, you might want to create different versions of your portfolio; a curator might benefit from a different contextualization and work selection than an art school or a gallery.
Understand the power of minimalism. While your portfolio is a medium and a service, an unexpected ideal for it is to become invisible. Viewers shouldn’t ask themselves questions about the portfolio, but about your work. Your portfolio should enable maximum and exclusive visibility of your vision, and not get bogged down by viewers asking themselves questions like “Why did they use this font?”, “Is this person aware of all the typos in here?”, “Is this layout change intentional?”, etc. Most frequently, artists will want a portfolio that doesn’t “irritate” (neither positively nor negatively) – because although irritation can increase emotional attachment, it can also lessen trust. Instead of the portfolio to irritate, you want to create space for the works within it to do so. Minimalism is a good strategy for this: to reduce anything that takes focus from your vision.

It’s important to understand that minimalism doesn’t mean to “show little”. Instead, use minimalism to offer a maximalist emotional connection to you and your vision. Minimalist doesn’t mean “show a lot of thumbnail-sized artworks”, but will usually mean to show less works, but maybe in fuller size. If your portfolio is a title page with your name, followed by a pure list of artworks, then this might be minimalistic – but does it properly and optimally lead a stranger into your world? Finding your ideal balance between minimalism and portfolio-as-a-service can be challenging. A key ingredient in minimalism is to operate intentionally: to increase your sensitivities about any decision or micro-decision that goes into the creation process.

You can ask yourself questions like these: Is my layout consistent? Does my portfolio really need page numbers? Does my name have to be listed on every page? Does my contact information (mails and social media links) need the title “Contact information”? Do my social media links need small icons ahead of them? Does my document need multiple fonts – and do these fonts need to be fancy? AM I SURE THAT ALL-CAPS FONTS ARE A SENSITIVE CHOICE? Are my images always at the same position within a page? Is it important to include all works of a series? Am I sure my portfolio should have colorful background images? Do I serve my vision if my portrait photo is too fanciful?

Make your portfolio self-contained. Some online application processes require your portfolio and CV to be separate files, or require you to enter your exhibition history and artist statement into online forms. Nevertheless, understand the power of creating a self-contained portfolio: something that offers a complete arc, from beginning to end.
As such, a portfolio has to be a file, not a collection of files: a portfolio cannot be a directory with images, plus a text file with an artist statement – because this approach doesn’t let you influence the direction a viewer takes into the content.
A self-contained portfolio (that is a medium and a service) might not have to include your complete exhibition history – the correct place for this is your CV. But your self-contained portfolio should likely include an introductory artist statement, and a narrative CV listing your most noteworthy achievements (specific exhibitions, residencies or art collections).
Understand the power of mood makers. While your portfolio will usually benefit from minimalism, it can make sense to include images that promote the atmosphere of your work – to transcend the sterility of your work existing in a digital file. Mood makers can be rare full-screen images of your studio or work environment, of your tools or setup, or a close-up of your work – or even exhibition views (although these could better exist in a separate chapter of your portfolio).

While these strategies will help you get deeper into the medium of portfolios, you ultimately have to trust your own feelings about your decision making process. As with everything we do, we first and foremost need to listen to our gut: if your vision requires an entirely maximalist approach, then you need to for it. If your vision requires you to be unintentional about your portfolio creation process, then you might be on to something powerfully relevant. Enjoy the ride!

What kind of intention is required of artists?

Intentions offer the impression of agency – but art processes can also thrive on chaos. The main intention that artists will require is the one to stay curious, and determined to establish their personal processes to continue making art.

Art is often thought to require intention, but that’s not necessarily true. We want to live in a world influenced by our intentions, since this gives us the impression of agency – of power and control over the world. Reality doesn’t necessarily confirm this though: randomness can influence the world just as much. You often can’t influence beyond your initial leanings and affinities. Work, network, business and personal development thrive on both intention and randomness. Art might be their love child. Life brims with their synchronicities.

Unintended situations and mistakes can set the stage for intentional further steps. Order and chaos constantly overlap and expand each other. Your grasp of the situation, your sensitivity and empathy are the best possible navigation tools. Especially when thinking of art as a process to express contemporaneity, and witnessing the many unintended aspects of life surrounding us, the “best” art might actually be the result of unintended choices: you can create sloppy work if you’re sloppy or lazy – and might expertly express something relevant about the Zeitgeist. Since the arts don’t feature monolithic, fixed quality judgments, you can use processes as sloppily or exacting as you want, without resulting in works that are inherently better or worse than the rest. There simply isn’t a connection between a work’s creation process, and whether it will appear “good” or “bad” to others. What ultimately matters is whether your practice is authentic to you. Instead of intention, focus your authenticity – intently.

Work, network, business and personal development thrive on both intention and randomness. Art might be their love child.

What’s ultimately required of you is the curiosity and determination, the intention to carve your own work processes, and thus a (mental, emotional, physical) space that suits you – even though it might feel like a niche, it is still yours, and thus essential. If it enables you to establish processes and collaborations that feel good enough to continue going, then with luck and business dedication, and a sound understanding of what success means to you, this success might actually follow. Along the way, unexpected situations will arise: conversations with people who care about your work; job opportunities and collaboration requests; these might influence your idea of success, and create an ever-more holistic version of it.

But this all is based on a rather humble idea: that artists need to work on establishing a life that enables them to continue making art.

How should I engage with and process feedback?

Processing feedback can be challenging; someone’s remarks might have hurt you or left you dumbfounded about what to do next. To process feedback satisfyingly, consider the general three-step approach to challenges: to prepare, to create agency, and to review what happened.

Consider reading the following three chapters:

How do I review a feedback session?

“Reviewing a feedback session” is one of the three important parts you need to care about when having a feedback session (the other two are “preparing for feedback” and “creating agency”).

Understand the feedback to consist of preparation and performance, both of which should ultimately be reviewed by you. You can see the entirety of this as an operetta consisting of three acts, with the final one again being under your control. Review the entire situation and cadence in order to understand your personal key takeaways: your preparation, your performance, and the specific feedback.

This can help you transcend the emotionality of the actual feedback round, and let you come to your own conclusions on how to proceed. Sidestepping the post-mortem won’t make the feedback less important, but risks appropriating the feedbacker’s words, without filtering them properly through your own set of values. Doing so will let you understand and form your own set of values.

Consider the following:

Replay: If you recorded the conversation, take time to listen to it after some days or weeks. You’ll most likely spot parts that you didn’t notice during the actual conversation; undercurrents that your memory might have suppressed. Even if you don’t have an audio recording, the notes that you (or a colleague) took will usually bring back specific memories of the conversation. Retrace the conversation with the goal to understand the intention of what was said; this is important to judge whether the feedbacker’s propositions matter to you.
Look for facts: Find statements that describe the feedbacker’s factual experiences: “Your work obviously references the composition of X, but by removing y, it seems to miss the original artist’s point”. “You appropriate a political cause where I don’t personally see your experience or credibility”. These might be perfect opportunities to dive into the mentioned references or criticisms: the better you know (and can express) your work and the thinking behind it, the more you’ll be able to discuss it at eye level; this in turn will help you to dig ever deeper into your art’s rabbit hole.
- Filter out personal statements: Learn to differentiate hollow from deeper factual feedback (“I simply love your work!”, “I really don’t like this way of work”, “Maybe you should try a different medium, since this one doesn’t seem to work for you” are examples of statements with low actionable value, and thus offer little reason to change your course. The feedbacker’s personal opinion might feel important to themselves (and you), and might actually be important. They might be on to something that they can’t express verbally – yet obviously, specific reasons for their thinking would let you trace their intentions way better (and let you judge whether they are applicable to you).
- Filter out negativity and allegations: Understand that even the worst and most destructive feedback can be turned into a learning opportunity – by stepping back and unemotionally working through whatever “facts” were delivered. Understand which of them might be meaningful to you.
Judge the feedbacker’s performance: Find out whether you, your intentions and reasons were noticed (eg. “Compared to your work from last time, I see that you focused X”, “Could you explain your reasons for doing Y?”, “What references did you have in mind when doing these works?”, “Are you aware of the work of X, and how yours relates to it?”). Judge whether strategies were offered to continue from here (if not, ask yourself what actions you could derive from the feedback). What artists, art works, curators, exhibitions, books or magazine articles were recommended (or are now on your radar without having been recommended) to progress further? What can you learn about the feedbacker and their character that might help you to be better prepared the next time? Will you be able to anticipate their future reaction?
Judge your performance: Judge whether your work introduction and answers were satisfactory, or whether your nervousness, lack of preparation etc might have let you slip. How can you improve your performance for the next round?

How can I create agency in a feedback session?

“Creating agency” is one of the three important parts you need to care about when having a feedback session (the other two are “preparing for feedback” and “reviewing a feedback session”).

Even though your work will be discussed by someone else, this doesn’t mean that you should be passive. Strive to create agency in feedback situations: by preparing for the situation (the previous point), by anticipating the course of the discussion, and by knowing that in the end it will be you who will analyze, and thus judge the feedback’s quality.
Consider the following steps:

Record the conversation: Recording the conversation lets you relive and review it at your convenience. This is easily done with your smartphone or tablet, and doesn’t require dedicated equipment or microphones. Before you record anything, make sure to ask for permission; be prepared to explain your intention: to review the feedback, and to more efficiently progress forward. You can even mention your nervousness, which sometimes results in you forgetting what was said.
If you can’t record, consider writing down your thoughts during the feedback session – this is something that is always possible, and doesn’t need anyone’s permission. You can even announce it upfront. If you feel embarrassed, or simply aren’t good at writing while listening, ask someone else to take notes for you. Instruct them what to look out for, so that they can focus on what you’re curious about. If you can’t record and don’t have anyone who can take notes for you, then write down your memories right after the feedback session is over.

Understand that recording and note-taking can also act as potent filter to proactively shield you from weird, imbalanced behaviors: awareness of being recorded can create a sort of “invisible authority”, a supporting power that might otherwise not be present.
Explain yourself: Use your prior preparations to now give a quick intro and overview on what you do, and how you understand your work. Explain your references, preferences and frustrations; and ask any specific questions that you might have. How you present your work has the power to influence the feedbacker’s focus. Use this to get feedback on what you most want.
Listen: After having done your preparations and introductions, it’s time to let your work speak for itself, to see where it takes the feedbacker. This is an exciting moment that might have seen you worried, giddy, and maybe even sleepless the previous night. Now listen as your work becomes a platform for someone’s thoughts. Learn to listen neutrally, without taking offense or pride. Don’t antedate the feedbacker’s opinion by interrupting them. Refrain from being dominant or shy; let there be space for the work to speak. This can be especially hard when the feedbacker takes a lot of time without saying anything, or if the work demands a lot of time (as in a performance or video work). Trust in the work you created, and listen.
Expect misunderstandings: Since everyone is and interprets differently, your work often won’t immediately be seen according to your intentions. That’s normal, and the reason why you want external feedback: to increase your knowledge on how to create work that’s concise enough to evoke what you want it to, without requiring your contextualization. It’s OK if, in your apprenticeship phase, your work is deemed to be plagiative, lacking art historical knowledge, etc. Don’t worry about these things – they are the reason why you wanted feedback.
Expect harshness: Even though art is a forum for highly individual content, the art world’s protagonists aren’t free of being judgemental. Even mellow, kind people can misunderstand your intentions, or might have an extremely bad day. In the worst case, you might receive feedback from someone intending to hurt you; for all these reasons, consider shielding yourself mentally from abuse: don’t believe everything that’s said. Don’t transfer authority over your work in general, and specifically not to someone who discusses it insensitively.

If worse comes to worse, consider asking questions like these: “How can you know so surely that the work isn’t good? Who defines what’s ‘good’? How can I know that I should listen to you? What would happen if I don’t? Couldn’t worthwhile work emerge from pursuing my voice further? If I would pursue your path only, wouldn’t this create a copy of your work?“

How do I prepare for a feedback session?

“Preparing for feedback” is one of the three important parts you need to care about when having a feedback session (the other two are “creating agency” and “reviewing a feedback session”).

Feedback is most often given for a selection of works (chosen by you), and tends to consider your verbal contextualization – preparations for a feedback session should therefore at least include these two topics. There are various other things to consider:

Understand your intention: The better you understand your intention, the easier it will be to process the feedback’s result; do you care for the feedbacker to offer art historical contexts, to judge your progress since the last time you met, to acknowledge your improvements in craft, or are you essentially looking for praise? If you’re looking for feedback on specific issues, it makes sense to explicitly say so. If you want general feedback that relies on the feedbacker’s free associations, you might want to state this as well.
Be smart about the selection of work you present: Since feedback is most often given for a selection of works, it pays off to curate this selection wisely. Select works that have a high likelihood of letting the feedbacker grasp what you’re doing, in relation to the feedback that you’re looking for. Don’t go for quantity: select work that represents your current status quo, potentially including a tight selection of past work to visualize your progress and history.
Contextualize the presented work: Understand how to verbally introduce and contextualize the selected work, in order for the feedbacker to understand what you’re up to. Eventually your work should speak for itself – but in an apprenticeship phase (or when talking to someone from a different field), this often isn’t realistic. This also usually helps in building a relationship to the feedbacker, so over time they understand your personality and modes of expression increasingly better.
Try to have original works available: Nothing beats original works; even though professionals know that a reproduction can’t reach the original’s physicality, vibrance, volume or duration, discussing work on reproductions leads to all sorts of misunderstandings.
Understand the feedbacker and their preferences: Understand whom you’re asking for feedback by researching their aesthetic and semantic preferences – this will help you anticipate and understand their feedback, and can guide you when reviewing their advice, and how it might matter to you. It might even help you understand their character: are they benevolent, attentive, eloquent and confident – or insecure, passive-aggressive, sadistic, and weirdly incongruent?

Understand that researching someone’s work can lead to the wrong expectations: people can be more complex than their published work – or way more banal. That’s why it can pay off to ask colleagues about their experiences and assessment; ideally, you could ask a feedbacker upfront: “What art do you enjoy? What does art mean to you? What’s your aim when offering feedback? Do you believe in certain aesthetics to be better or worse than others? Do you care about the person behind the work you criticize? If so, do you feel responsible for how you make them feel?”
Expect implicit feedback: People love to offer advice. Since art raises endless questions (on quality, semantics, ideals etc), artists are bound to receive unsolicited feedback and work discussions at all sorts of events: on social media, at studio visits, at other people’s exhibition openings etc. Being prepared for explicit feedback sessions is one thing; it pays off to be prepared for implicit feedback rounds as well, since this can help you to properly present your work, and process what was said.

How would ideal feedback look like?

Ideal feedback would consider the person behind the work, their condition and progress. It would compare the current iteration to their previous work, while putting it into the proper art historical and societal contexts. It would be highly attentive and radically honest, and offer guidance through specific, actionable feedback (“Read up on the work of X”, “Look into the late works of Y”, “Experiment with wood, now that you focused on metal so much”, “Did you consider using oil instead of acrylics?”) – and would explain why the specific feedback is deemed important.

Ideal feedback would offer contextual criticism: “This doesn’t seem to work as you intended, potentially because you did X”. It wouldn’t speak in absolutes, and thus wouldn’t criticize works as “good” or “bad”, “right” or “wrong” – because these judgements only make sense in the context of specific quality ideals; instead of saying “I like how you did this”, ideal feedback would be drastically more specific: “Since you stated that your goal was to counter stereotype X, using this choice of color makes seems to work in your favor – it puts the piece in an unexpected context”.

Ideal feedback would care about both the artist and the state of art, while acknowledging that all opinions ultimately are subjective: yes, a feedbacker might have more knowledge about various fields (than the person who created the work), but that knowledge might not turn out to be relevant for the specific context or artwork – already because it always has to be the producing artist themselves who has to decide on their work’s quality ideals. Ideal feedback would judge without being judgemental. For all these reasons, ideal feedback is rare.

Safe Space Principles for Feedback

Ideal feedback would follow safe space principles, and would specifically

respect everyone and their creations, and be sensitive to individual, societal and cultural differences;
respect and acknowledge individual emotions;
use attentive, active listening that accepts silence in both feedbacker and artist (finished works are “allowed” to be able to speak for themselves);
use trustful confidentiality – both in one-on-one settings, as well as in group discussions (this can prevent participants from bringing guests unannounced, since the group’s trust matters more than the guest’s curiosity),
challenge the work (or the ideas behind it), not the artist who created it;
accept everything as having equal worth, even if not everyone can understand that worth: it would treat all perspectives as valid.

Processing Feedback

You can’t easily influence who talks to you about your work – if people are moved by it, they will do so even without asking whether it’s appropriate or whether you’re ready for it. Non-ideal feedback will happen. While it’s impossible to always anticipate the quality of feedback, it’s possible to judge exactly that after it happened. This enables you to sift through whatever information was given, to find what’s most valuable for you – enabling you to appropriate what has been said, and develop your own opinions about it. Your humbleness, sensitivity and self-worth are key to processing feedback effectively – to discard what’s irrelevant to you, without missing growth potentials.

Processing feedback represents a balancing act, since it connects the two universes: the feedbacker’s and the artist’s.

The feedbacker’s words rest on one side; they either discuss your work without having being asked by you; or have been contacted by you for specific reasons: your appreciation of their expertise, credibility, authority and/or success.
Your own universe on the other side, which got manifested into an artwork, brimming with expectation, mistakes, and hopes for future works yet uncreated.

Being an Expert

You might lack the expertise, credibility, authority and success of the feedbacker, but are usually an expert in your own life and history. While they might be experts in the field in which you want to improve and progress, they probably aren’t experts in your life, and of your work. They often don’t know why you did what you did. They might not even be interested, but rather care to focus on the medium’s history, and how your work deviates weirdly and wrongly from it. Their cultural, societal, gender- or generation-based background might differ too much to understand the potential of your work.

Depending on their subjective tastes they will applaud, make fun of, or even disregard your work.
Depending on their character and humanity, they might even disregard you, or attack you instead of the artwork (“ad hominem attack”). They might choose graceful or derogatory remarks.

An expert interested in offering ideal feedback will not simply talk positively or negatively about your work, neither of which helps you: if you came for facts and advice, someone’s praise or disapproval doesn’t really help a lot: it’s too obviously subjective, and not at all actionable; instead, it can be seen as lazy way of telling someone off. Someone actually invested in your growth would instead offer various references (art historical, political, semantic, aesthetic, etc) and actionable strategies.

All of this shows that ideal feedback is hard to find. To navigate feedback satisfyingly nevertheless, consider the following chapter.

What’s the anatomy of art feedback?

Artists constantly receive feedback for their work, entirely independently of whether they’re looking for it. Feedback comes in many forms and attitudes, and for all sorts of reasons. It’s most often thought about as a tool to increase insights into one’s work practice: a feedbacker offers thoughts about your creation. Depending on the feedbacker’s knowledge about art history, politics, symbols, metaphors etc, your understanding about your work might increase – which ideally leads to you creating stronger, deeper, more focussed and simply “better” work.

The challenge with feedback lies in the multiplicity of art: because art isn’t monolithic, there can be no clear definitions of what creates a “good” artwork. Resultantly, the feedbacker’s knowledge might simply not be relevant to your aesthetics or vision. In the worst case, their opinions and preferences don’t match yours at all. In case of the feedbacker being in a position of power (eg. an art school teacher), you (a student) might be strongly inclined to favor their comments over your own opinion. This can also happen if you feel insecure about your creation: you might be on to something, but might not yet be strong enough to see or believe in it.

That’s why feedback benefits from people who are radically open-minded, and transparent about their intentions; an ideal feedbacker won’t have their advice be formed by their specific aesthetic and semantic opinions and preferences, but will be able to offer meta advice: if that is the direction you want to head towards, this might be able to get you there. This includes knowledge about the creator’s progress: the better a feedbacker understands the creator’s intentions and history, the better they might be able to offer advice on how to improve their work, according to its (and not theirs) inner logic – aesthetics, semantics, materials, etc. In contemporary art, the worst feedback is one that aims towards specific aesthetical goals, and wants to transfer them to a creator.

The ideal feedback setting is similar to a therapeutic safe space: both parties can rely on openness and transparency, aimed to increase enlightenment.

Intentions

Feedback benefits from understanding the intentions of both the feedbacker and the person seeking feedback:

Ideally, a feedbacker would want to help you get deeper into your work, and would be able to do so in a respectful way that considers you, your condition and previous progress. Realistically though, feedbacker’s can have all sorts of intentions; some feedback isn’t given to help but to vent (maybe your work rubbed someone the wrong way). Some feedback is given in order for you to adapt someone else’s artistic principles. Understanding the feedbacker’s intentions will help you in judging whether it might really help you in deepening your own way, and strengthening your voice.
Ideally, a person receiving feedback would want to deepen their understanding about their work; to expand knowledge of its semantics, get insights about the history of the chosen aesthetics, etc. In reality, some people look for feedback simply because they want the feedbacker’s attention and appreciation; they might not actually be interested in growth.

Implicit and explicit Feedback

Feedback can happen explicitly or implicitly:

Explicit feedback is defined by a clear setting, enabling everyone to understand the context in which opinions are given (eg. at portfolio reviews, when talking to a curator, …).
Implicit feedback on the other hand happens without this kind of framing (eg. during a studio visit by a peer, or a chat over coffee). Since it usually happens without introduction, implicit feedback often emerges unexpected and unwanted, and can be harder to spot and digest – especially if it’s transgressive.

In educational settings (art schools, workshops, etc), feedback is used as a major tool to convey insights, and thus to help you learn about yourself and your work. But even in institutions, feedback isn’t always explicit (as in scheduled feedback sessions): it can appear in casual comments by colleagues, assistants, teachers or curators, and isn’t always based on the feedbacker’s preceding analyses or self-inquires. Quite often, feedback is given seemingly as instantaneously as the artwork hits the feedbacker’s nerves. Since implicit feedback surrounds artists a lot, it is good practice to look out for this sort of “impromptu feedback”, and to increase once competency in recognizing it. Some people can register and analyze new work extremely quickly and sensitively – but most don’t have this capacity.

Feedback and Transgression

Feedback doesn’t simply include the potential for transgressions; in extreme cases (depending on the power dynamics, individual sensitivity and empathy) the act of offering feedback can itself be transgressive, especially if it is “offered” in ways that are too offensive to you. Even though often unrealistic, it’s healthy to expect the upholding of safe space principles for any kind feedback, independently of whether it’s given in explicit or implicit settings – whether it’s a family member suddenly discussing your work on the phone (when you didn’t expect it), or your professor during a scheduled feedback session. Feedback should only happen when you are ready for it – a safe space can’t exist if there isn’t knowledge about mutual control and respect. When someone pushes to give you feedback, it can be smart to understand them as an aggressor, independently of their position and power.

Emotional Attachment

Technically speaking, feedback returns information to the source of a signal: your work can be seen as the signal, and you as its source. As creator, you’re probably attached to your creations (your “signals”): you had specific reasons that led to their creation, and likely had to overcome obstacles during the creation process. This might have required all sorts of experiments and frustrations, but might also have shown potentials for further investigations. You might feel unsure about some of your choices, and happy about others. Creating an artwork is a complex, and often unstable process: quality ideals need to be established, knowledge of craft/materials/processes needs to be increased: at first, every artwork is a bold statement – potentially bolder than you. That’s why feedback situations are inherently challenging: your work, and thus your ideas, your intellect, your emotionality, your whole self, is put under the spotlight. Feedback can put you at a crossroads: do you believe in yourself and your work, or in the feedback that might want to see your work transformed?

A Moebius strip without clear distinction between outside an inside

Processing Feedback

Processing feedback requires you to balance trust in yourself with trust in someone else:

Purely believing in yourself likely results in ignoring the feedbacker’s potential valuable advice.
Purely believing in the feedbacker’s words risks disabling your voice – the sole reason why you initially wanted to make art.

How you navigate these topics is both deeply personal and philosophical, and always has tremendous consequences for your work. That’s why it can be a good practice to actually ask the feedbacker: Should I really listen to you? What if I don’t? Couldn’t worthwhile work emerge from pursuing my voice further?

Contemporary art thrives on diversity – your voice might be a relevant addition to it. For this reason, teaching and discussing contemporary art practices often differs from teaching traditional crafts, where quality ideals are predefined and often static. In the arts, quality is an extremely dynamic and personal attribute – it’s a multitude. Feedback and self-esteem are closely related. Feedback and luck are closely related as well: if you’re insecure about your work, and get to be a student of a highly successful, yet sadistic artist-teacher, a lot of your voice and ideas, your hopes and dreams can be erased or diminished before they ever got to exist.

Judging Feedback

Feedback can result in you feeling small and irrelevant – or praise your work to the heavens. Neither helps you to grow. To transcend this, establish a proactive attitude: judge what was offered.

Judge feedback according to its sensitivity to (and knowledge of) your goals, its sensitivity to the work you offered. Judge the feedbacker’s sensitivity towards you, your history and progress. Although feedback seems to imply the transfer of authority (from you to the feedbacker), this must never happen: as the work’s creator, you depend on your sensitivity towards (and authority over) it. Feedback should help you get closer to your ideals, not to subvert or change them.
Feedback can even be challenging when it’s positive: you might want ways to increase your game, but only received praise; understand that good feedback will always offer ways to increase your knowledge. Judge feedback according to the art historical references you received, and the amount of new information you can process.

Feedback and Autonomy

Some feedback settings will feel as if your work gets judged, stripping you of autonomy over it. Never lose this autonomy: judge the feedbacker and their advice’s quality and empathy, and ultimately work on setting up a network of trusted feedbackers: people on whose knowledge and advice you can rely on, and who care about safe space principles. Pursuing this search puts you in control (of the search, and ultimately of the setting and participants), even though you might still feel small and irrelevant.