the value of feedback

On inner searching and the gaze of another.

Sometimes it helps to step back from your own work and see it through someone else's eyes. Feedback then becomes not a judgement, but a kind of mirror that invites you to keep searching.

I notice that I tend to ask for feedback at moments when I already feel doubt myself. Not because I feel insecure, but because I sense that the work isn't quite right yet. That something still rubs, or remains open. At those moments I am searching, and that is exactly when it helps to let someone else take a look.

The feedback I ask for is not confirmation. Nor is it a direction to follow. It is a starting point — something from which I can continue to search, deeper and further.

Often I ask for feedback from people who are not artists themselves. They look at the work differently, without technical or artistic reflexes. That opens up perspectives I cannot always reach on my own. I notice that this sometimes makes them feel uncomfortable — as if they are afraid of saying the wrong thing.

But I don't ask for their feedback because I want to take over their ideas. I ask because I want to challenge myself.

I don't take what someone says literally. It sets something in motion. It challenges me to question myself and my work again, to feel more clearly what it is really about for me. Sometimes it confirms what I already sensed, sometimes it reveals something I couldn't yet put into words.

Perhaps, for me, feedback is precisely about this: what happens when inner searching is reflected through the gaze of another.

Feedback doesn't help me find answers, but better questions. And that is exactly where I can move forward.