“The next move is what you see, not what you think of. … the next move in my paintings came from paintings that I made, and I saw that something happened in the painting that looked like a really good opportunity — and pursued that. But I didn’t think of it, I recognised it when I saw it, after I’d made it.”
Frank Stella, in “How Painting Happens (and why it matters)” by Martin Gayford, page 17
The context of this quote is that art writer/critic Martin Gayford had asked artist Frank Stella about his moving from gestural abstract expressionism to his series of black paintings, whether he was consciously searching for the next new thing. Underlying this is the viewpoint of art history as being evolutionary.
I think it’s far easier to recognise a possibility after you’d made a painting, and in the midst of it, rather than thinking of it beforehand “out of thin air”. That “what if I…?” thought that gets prompted by something you done, deliberately or accidentally. What if I had done X, and what if I did Y, what if I did X with Y, what if I used X instead of Y…? If you don’t make paint or draw anything at all, sitting around for inspiration to strike, you’re losing out on this way to finding that inspiration or idea.
