Are you tidying yourself out of your paintings?

I'm away this weekend, visiting an arts event with friends. We're in Staithes, a tiny fishing village tucked into the North Yorkshire coast.

Staithes is one of those places that seems almost designed for artists. Steep cliffs rise around a jumble of old cottages, narrow streets tumble down towards the harbour, and everywhere you look there are boats, rooftops, stone walls, and glimpses of sea.

We had a lovely day wandering around, popping in and out of buildings, looking at art, and generally enjoying being somewhere different.

But something struck me as we went around ...

A few of the artists had left their sketchbooks out and I found them completely captivating. In fact, the books were almost always much more exciting than the paintings hanging on the walls.

I don’t mean it as a criticism of the artists. Quite the opposite - the sketchbooks showed just how interesting they actually were.

Inside those pages, everything was happening. There were scribbles and notes and strange little drawings. There were half-finished ideas and colour experiments and things stuck over other things. There were observations that had obviously taken time, alongside marks that looked as though they’d been made in seconds.

You could feel the artists within those pages. You could see them looking at the world and asking questions about it.

What happens if I draw it like this? What if I use this colour? What if I simplify that? What happens if I don't bother finishing this at all?

The books were curiosity personified. There was patience in some pages and recklessness in others, and most of all, there was freedom.

And then I would look up at the paintings on the wall, and see none of that. The strange marks had gone, as had the awkwardness, the experiments, and the things that didn't quite make sense. 

Everything had been resolved, made presentable, and turned into a capital P Painting. And it reminded me that we can be far too quick to tidy ourselves out of our work.

The moment we decide we're making something that matters, something strange can happen - we start behaving 'somehow.'  We might try to draw 'properly' or avoid trying things that might not work. We correct the wonky line and cover the ugly bit and resolve the unresolved. And without meaning to, we can slowly remove all the evidence of ourselves.

I think that's why sketchbooks are so often more interesting than finished paintings.

It's not because small pieces of paper are inherently more exciting than canvas. It's because we give ourselves different permission when we work in them. A sketchbook page doesn't have to make sense - in a way, it is allowed to be the question rather than an answer.  And perhaps that's something worth carrying into our other work.

I've been spending a lot of time in sketchbooks myself recently, and yesterday reminded me why I've been enjoying them so much. 

In those books, I'm not trying to get anywhere. I'm just following my curiosity. I'm making marks because I want to see what they do. I'm sticking things down and covering them up. I'm ruining pages and rescuing them - or sometimes just leaving them ruined.

And increasingly, I'm wondering how much of that energy I can protect when I move back onto a larger surface. How can I keep that same attitude? Can I allow something to remain awkward or unresolved or strange? Can I stop before I've explained everything?

Because in leaving things raw and slightly unfinished, we put so much more of ourselves into the work. and in turn I think that allows the viewer to connect with what we've made.

So my new motto is as follows:

Don't tidy everything up.  Don't answer every question. And don't be so keen to turn the interesting mess into a "finished painting."