Studio Notes

Greetings and best wishes to you for the coming year! Studio Notes is a monthly email about creativity, painting, and life from the studio of Tara Keating. Thank you for joining me!

Looking Back and Planning Ahead

I spent the last few weeks doing a year-end review summary for myself in addition to planning the year ahead. In past years, I didn’t really do this process until late January or even February when applications are due for summer art fairs. However, I have some solid goals and deadlines I want to hit in 2022 and I realized that starting sooner rather than later was a good idea.

One positive new thing that began in 2021, is that I’ve been meeting regularly on video calls with a small group of artists. We recently discussed ways to measure success and look at the year in ways that feel holistic and that are not just based on sales figures. We came up with a few questions that helped me review the last year and got me thinking about the future. We also came up with several goals to help contribute to our personal artistic growth. Here are a few of my favorites.

Year-End Review Questions

How many paintings did I complete? What were my favorites and why?
What skills improved this year?
What was most discouraging?
What was beyond my personal control?
What workshops, classes, or webinars did I complete?
How did I grow professionally?
Who has been influential to my growth as an artist? Did I thank them?
What can I take out of my life to move forward? (This is a good place to acknowledge bad habits I want to change.).

Growth Goals

Try something new both in my work and in my life
Say “yes” to something that scares me
Fail at something! This one makes me smile but also fills me with dread (thank you Tomoko Ouchi). The idea is that as artists we need to take risks in our art and sometimes in our lives, but the potential for failure is an inherent part of risk-taking. Therefore, we must accept that not everything will work. If I haven’t failed at something by the end of this year, then I need to take bigger risks. This can also help reframe situations in a more positive light when we have setbacks and disappointments.

What’s on my easel?

I just finished cleaning my studio in honor of the new year. That means I haven’t been painting for a few days (yes, it takes me a few days to clean my studio). As a result, I don’t have anything on the easel right now, but I do have some works on paper to share (this one is on my drafting table). I plan to continue working on paper for the first few weeks of this year to loosen up, explore and play. I hope that puts me in a positive and creative mindset to develop some new and exciting work. All the images in this issue of Studio Notes are experiments on paper.

Ask an Artist

Thank you to the reader who submitted questions for this issue of Studio Notes! I love getting your art-related questions. Reach out to me at studiokeating1@gmail.com and put “Ask an Artist” in the subject line and I will try to answer your query in the next issue.

How do you determine when an abstract piece is complete? Is it just a sense that it’s finished, or do you have specific criteria or guidelines?

One of the main indicators I use to determine if an abstract painting is done is if there is anything further I want to do to it. When I start a painting, I generally make big moves, and as I add layers and the piece develops those moves and changes start to get smaller. Towards the end of a piece the changes I make are so small, people other than myself probably wouldn’t even notice them. At this stage I like to hang the painting up in my dining room where I can look at it away from the studio. After having a nice meal, I can generally look at painting with a critical but somehow relaxed eye and analyze if it’s done or if it must go “back to the studio.”

Of course this process assumes that I like the work…if I don’t like the overall work, for whatever reason, then I need to make a big move and obliterate it or drastically change it and start the process over.

In addition to this process, I do have a set of guidelines taped to my studio wall. I look at this list if I am struggling with a piece and trying to figure out if it works.

Does the piece work both from a distance and from close-up? (This is sometimes called the ‘loud and quiet conversation’)
Does my eye travel around the entire surface/composition? What is the path?
Do I have separate dark and light shapes I can clearly see?
Check the painting in black and white (I use my phone camera) to see/analyze values correctly.