A few thoughts on how artists THINK

‘How do you think?’ That was what this artist friend I was speaking with a few weeks ago asked me. The question caught me off guard; I didn’t really understand it at first. What she meant was, like, does the image come first, like in your head, or the words, or ideas?

It struck me as one of those ‘it’s so deep, I’m drowning’ questions, but it stuck with me because honestly it had never occurred to me before. I guess it’s just one of many things I’d taken for granted; believe me, I try not to take things that way, like I try to remind myself to be grateful even for the smallest, inanest things.

But it was when my artist friend explained that she had asked me, because of another artist she knew. This other artist, I understood, was a paragon of artistic skill, as tidy and precise as a ninja with a laser cutter ~ at least, until my friend told me this other artist was unable to visualise anything she’d never seen.  Like for instance, my friend said, a pink elephant with wings.
​

Now that struck me cold. ​

That artist wouldn’t be able to paint one, because she’d never actually seen one. `Wow,’ I remember blurting out. ‘If that ever happened to me I’d go hang myself.’ (Well of course I wouldn’t, but you know what I mean.)

After all, painting creatures you don’t see every day (or any where) (as far as many of us know anyway) is what I live to paint!

I remembered this artist I’d read about once (Courbet, it turns out), who I think was asked, how come you never paint angels? And he said he would if he were shown one. I brought this up in the conversation, adding that I don’t think the artist my friend was talking about, meant it like that.
​

My friend went on to say that it wasn’t and that it was really a thing. ​

Aphantasia was mentioned (and corroborated by my sister who did psychology at school). Now I’m no psychologist and I don’t mean for this post to be a dissertation or something, okay.

But the way I understand aphantasia is not having a mind’s eye, or rather not being able to, I don’t know, imagine, I guess, or see made up things up in your head. That, for the life of me, is something I can’t imagine not being able to do.

But hey, wouldn’t it be boring if everyone’s brains worked the same way, am I right?

I also mentioned Kandinsky and synesthesia, and my friend nodded and I think we were both on the same page.

But I hadn’t answered the question ~

~ which, after having said all that, did make me think a bit. I guess, understanding how you come up with things in your head, so as to be able to create things, is a good thing. For artists, I mean.

I mean after all, understanding how rain works gave rise to cloud seeding, and understanding how electricity works made it possible to write this post at night, and understanding how, oh, organs, I suppose, makes it possible to make sick people well. If you don’t know how the engine works, you won’t be able to repair it (or soup it up to win the grand prix).

I remember writing one or two posts about thinking things up to paint (oh heavens, I have a category called Conceptualisation LOL) ~ okay, I was able to dig these up about thinking techniques, what to do if you don’t know what to paint, and influences on your painting (which I think is totally related).

Having gone into how I ‘think up the things that I think’, I’d like to add that maybe, we’re (or at least I am) not so very different from the artist my artist friend was talking about. Because if you think about it, none of us can (or well, I can’t, anyway) think up anything, or even extrapolate on anything that we haven’t seen or read about somewhere.

I’m just a Salieri, so, I can’t speak for any Mozarts out there, if you know what I mean, but for the rest of us, maybe, whenever we think up anything it necessarily draws on something else that we’d seen or heard about somewhere.
​

Maybe it was something we’d experienced in some sensory way or other. ​

Maybe smells manifest visually for some people like sound did for Mr K, even years and years ago. Whatever it is, it may manifest itself in what we make.

Like mermaids. I didn’t invent the monster with a human top half and a fishy bottom. I’d seen these monsters everywhere since I was a kid. So, when I started making my own mermaids (in third grade, maybe), they looked like that. No thanks to me, surely. I didn’t come up with that concept on my own.

And the fish tails of mermaids, with the caudal fin, anal fin, lateral line, and dorsal fin ~ there are *real* fishies in the world with tails just like that.

So maybe the cavemen (or whoever way, waaay back in the day), having caught a fleeting glimpse in the corners of their eye (or mind’s eye) of an actual mermaid (hey, you never know) ~ when they started making pictures of mermaids, *real fishies* being easier to hand…

Dragons, for another (which someday I would so love to have a whole, dedicated show about) ~ they were described in the Bible, and folks much later on, once illustrations became more of a mainstream thing (and dino bones were discovered) ~ and scaly lizards being easier to hand…

Again, I’m not doing any research as I write this and I’m no academician; just talking out of my sleeping bag, here ~ but you get what I mean, I hope.

Of course, I wholeheartedly prefer to regard mermaids, dragons, and all my monsters as real as you or me; we just don’t see them around so much / they’re not ‘easier to hand’ these days LOL
​​

In any case, after taking a second or two to think, I did answer my artist friend’s question.

But even though it was just a few weeks ago (feels like a few years, now, to be honest), I need to take a couple more seconds to remember what I said. About whether the image or the words, or the idea came first.

I think I said it wasn’t the same, for me, every time, that sometimes one or the other would come first.  I equated ideas with words, words being the expression of an idea, even if the words were still in your head, I guess. In your head, you had to refer to them as something (or with something).

I said sometimes, I’d see (with my mind’s eye), a picture first, then I’d try to recapture that picture or reproduce that picture out here in the *real world* when I made anything. Other times, the words came first, then my jillabrains would try to interpret the words or the idea into something I could see ~ with my mind’s eye first, then my eye-eye lol
​

Heaven knows where the pictures or the images come from when they come first.

Or the words or ideas, for that matter ~ or why they come when they do. Once again, I’m not a psychiatrist or anything like that ~ but I probably had to see one when I was younger (or just get punished for lying haha) because I’d insist upon being able to see what my mind’s eye saw right alongside things in the *real world*.

For sure I wouldn’t want to be able to do that today in my old age (as a good many of the images and ideas in my filthy little head frighten me) (and I do live by myself haha). Although once in a long while I try to still be able to ‘bring things out of my brain’ to stand before me beside whatever I happen to be really looking at. (And then be grateful there really isn’t a (scary) monster in my apartment.) (Or is there? //scares self)


Anyway just thought I’d share a thing that struck me during a friendly artist’s chat, because maybe it bears a bit of reflection for us artists. How do we think, and how does knowing that (or how can it) make us better at what we do?

Because I imagine we all want to be better at our craft, and ideation  (whether you can see it with your mind’s eye or not) is arguably at the very root ~ or rather the heart (maybe not the mind, really) of what we do.

Anyway, I’m just a Salieri (sorry, mein herr) (you are, of course, a great composer in your own right), what do I know, haha. What do you think?