Labour of love.

One of my favourite parts of the creative process is the bit after the ideas have crystallised and you just have to knuckle down and do the work. I remembered this after seeing an artwork that involved lots and lots of straight lines drawn on a wall in interesting geometric patterns. Once the artist had come up with the idea and refined the design, well, someone had to get on with the business of making it a reality. Plenty of successful artists employ people to do this work for them, being far less interested in the execution than the idea itself. I used to help out with exhibition installs when I worked in a gallery years ago. One artwork involved bending hundreds of stainless steel nails in half with a pair of pliers, before they were hammered into a wall. Sitting for hours alongside other members of the team repetitively bending nails left my hands covered in blisters. But the feeling of being part of a piece of art as it came together was gratifying. Don’t get me wrong, spending day-in day-out doing this in a factory would be unbearable. It’s the end result that makes the labour satisfying.

It’s the same feeling painting a wall or sanding down a piece of furniture. I guess it’s why people like colouring books too. For me it’s a sort of meditation. The knowledge that a monotonous task will end with something better than before. That’s what separates it from drudgery. There’s the excitement of anticipation: you can visualise the result, but you can’t really know how it’s going to turn out until you get there. But the work can’t be rushed, it must be done at a steady pace.

With art, there are often creative choices to make along the way but they’re smaller, less significant choices. While the early ideas phase of an artwork can be exciting, it’s the space after that when I feel the most calm. In a piece of writing, it’s when the words flow easily because I already know what I want to say. It’s the feeling that I’m channelling something beyond my usual mundane self, and part of the creative process that I wouldn’t want to skip over.