looking is also making

An artist doesn't only create when they are making. Looking is also part of the process.

I've been noticing more and more how much looking is part of my creative process.

When I visit an exhibition or museum, I naturally look at the work itself. What does it make me feel? What catches my attention? Which image stays with me?

Recently, for example, I saw an exhibition by Frida Orupabo. Her way of working with separate body parts and fragments, bringing them together into new compositions, stayed with me. It made me think about how different parts can come together to create a new image and a new meaning.

But at the same time, I look in another way too. I look as an artist.

How did the artist solve this? Why does this composition work? Why was this format chosen? What does the underground do to the image? How are different materials combined? How is the work finished? What happens when an image doesn't stay neatly within the edges?

Sometimes I'm very aware of this. Other times, I only realise later that I've taken something with me from what I've seen.

Not literally. Not as something I want to copy. More as a possibility that stays somewhere in the back of my mind. Another way of looking at an image. A material I'd like to try myself. A composition that makes me think. A technical solution that makes me think: ah, that's another way of doing it.

I think that, as an artist, I'm constantly collecting.

Not only images and ideas, but also experiences, materials, shapes, colours, techniques and ways of looking. Everything we encounter along the way can somehow become part of what emerges later.

Maybe a new work begins much earlier than in the studio.

In a museum. On the street. During a conversation. In an image that stays with me. In something that intrigues me technically. In a feeling I don't yet have words for.

A work rarely begins for me with a fully worked-out plan.

Usually, there is something much more vague at first. An image in my mind. A feeling. A thought. Something that occupies me and for which I'm trying to find a form.

I start from my own visual language. From shapes and materials that have become familiar to me, but that can tell something different each time. At the same time, I continue to experiment with new techniques and media. Sometimes I don't know beforehand what that addition will do, but by trying it out, new possibilities emerge.

I simply begin.

I cut, draw, shift, combine, change. I look at what emerges and respond to it. Sometimes I know quite quickly where it is going. Sometimes I have no idea.

The work takes shape along the way.

That is why I'm trying more and more not to give myself the task of coming up with something new.

I don't need to sit down at my table with a completely new idea every time. I can simply begin with what is already there. With an image that has stayed with me. With something I've seen. With a feeling that doesn't yet have words. With a material I'm curious about.

Maybe the work already begins there.

Not at the moment I draw the first line, but much earlier. When I look. When I notice something. When something moves me or makes me curious, and I take it with me — consciously or unconsciously.

An artist doesn't only create when they are making. Looking is also part of the process.

And perhaps that's why I don't need to force something new to emerge.

I simply need to keep looking, keep collecting, and occasionally begin somewhere.

The rest can take shape along the way.