Work-In-Progress, GC Myers 2017-2018
Sometimes, stepping away and letting a piece rest allows for music to evolve. When returning, one must not only adapt to the music’s maturity but also one’s own…
–Hélène Grimaud
I came across the tweet below from classical pianist Hélène Grimaud that contains the quote above but a short video in which she speaks about taking on a new piece of music and how sometimes stepping away from it for a while allows for its growth within the artist. Very interesting.
Though we work in different mediums, her words really struck close to home for me. I have found that sometimes a new painting will reach a point, far from its completion, where it takes on an air of inevitability, where its destination feels set in my mind. All the choices feel as though they have been made and all that remains is just putting these decisions down on the surface. Completing these pieces is not as satisfying as the excitement portion of the process which is so vital to me takes place early on in these paintings.
It’s like reading a book to the end when you know exactly what will take place on every page.
It doesn’t happen all the time. Most pieces offer challenges and excitement to the very moment they take on a life of their own. But it is not an unusual occurrence.
But sometimes a piece like that will strike me in a certain way that has me questioning that preordained feeling. There is something in it that is begging for more from me. I don’t know exactly what it might be at that moment but it feels wrong to push through to completion then. Maybe I have been too rigid in what I was seeing for this particular piece and it wants to be something other than that. Maybe I need to grow more myself before moving on with it.
In these cases, these pieces are set aside and I then return to them periodically, to study them for a few minutes to see if there is any movement in my thought process for them. Sometimes it takes only a few days or weeks, sometimes months or years.
I tell a story about a canvas whose semi-sculptural gessoed surface felt so perfect and visually exciting to me that I set it aside in the studio for 6 or 7 months. I knew that I had to grow into it, to have an evolved perception of it, before taking it on.
Another example is the piece at the top of this page. It has been in the studio for 5 or 6 years in the state in which it is shown. I liked it very much at the top it was done but it felt like it needed more time, that to just forge ahead with the inevitability that I saw in it then would create a lesser version of what it could ultimately be. I just didn’t feel that I was ready to finish yet.
Once again, I needed to grow into it.
There are a number of such set-aside pieces in the studio like this. Some will reach their potential. Some will not. This piece has been gnawing at me in recent weeks to be finished, that I am finally ready for it. We shall see where it goes from here.
There are also some pieces that are set aside because they didn’t feel as though they were worthy or strong enough, that they had something missing in the way they were progressing. Quite often, time shows me that I was just not seeing them in the proper way. My perception of them evolves and they become something quite different than I had saw at first. That is very satisfying to see the apparent growth in these pieces as well as in myself.
You can click on the arrow below to watch the film clip of Hélène Grimaud without going to Twitter or X or whatever the hell they call it now.
Redtree Times 