Time is Everything

For an artist, the importance of studio time is critical. Being in the studio, thinking, working, evaluating. Time doing nothing but sitting with one’s work in front of them. Staring, Considering. Time confronting one’s work. Time looking. Time reconsidering. Studio time becomes a comfort that others do not understand. Studio time evaporates quickly when the work is good and working is effortless. It slows down when the work is a struggle.

Time is essential. Finding time can be challenging. There are always distractions; there is always something to pull and tear you to another place, another responsibility, another excuse to not work. Time is always ticking. That is one of the reasons I do not keep a clock in my studio. An artist knows that time is everything.

Artists are each unique in their studio practice as well as in their daily routines. For me, I try to be disciplined. I try to set a timeframe, a consistent chunk of time each day, in which to work. It’s not always easy. I fall from schedule, and when I do, I fall “out of hand.” I lose my hand—the effortlessness to make art with confidence, ease, and rhythm. When the routine is broken, when time passes too long, and I have lost the mind-eye-arm-hand-surface connection, it takes time to get it back. Time to resume my work with self-confidence and facility.

Routine can be a good and valuable friend. Routine allows a rhythm of practice when memory, aliveness, and the innate impulse to work falls in place—in tandem, in alignment, in balance—and good results come forward faster than when one is rusty, out of practice, new to the easel, or out of hand. Routine provides a secure place in a space that can be vulnerable without it.

Each day in the studio is a new invitation to realize something fresh: a spark, an idea, a dream, a goal. Opening the door into the studio world is stimulating. Yet it comes with its own anxieties: will the work be good today, will it be coherent, will it measure?

I worry about overworking, working too much to the point that the art becomes too considered and therefore lifeless. Rest is important. Rest, the in-between space of vision and making. The time when the body allows the mind to continue the work of making. Rest is the important hypnogogic state where the connection between idea and manifestation hovers and excites. Return is when ideas become physical—when the hand contacts materials and surface, and creative expression begin.

There is relief in working routinely over time. It provides structure, it provides discipline in a mindful, creative space that is the sole domain of the artist’s world. For me, this is the most exciting place of all—when the large stretch of self-regulating discipline becomes a bountiful moment when worries dissolve and I have no attached outcome to the results of the work. Just work for work’s sake. Do. Make. Experiment. Change. Make mistakes. Try something just a little bit new this time. Learn from the results and move onto the next piece of work. Work quickly, work slowly—it doesn’t matter at which speed, it is the engagement and courage that matter.

Creative process is as individual as every artist’s work is unique. I am fascinated by creative process and often wonder about other artist’s processes. How do artists differ and how do we overlap?