#4_When Art Fights Back
Not every piece of art wants to cooperate. Some of them fight back.
You have a vision, an idea in your head of where it’s going, and then—bam. It refuses to go that way. The colors don’t blend like you thought. The lines feel wrong. The whole thing pushes against you.
That’s when you have choices:
1️⃣ Try to force it back into your original plan. Sometimes, you can wrestle a piece into submission, but it often loses something in the process. The life, the rawness, the very thing that made it speak in the first place can get buried under overworked strokes.
2️⃣ Let the piece tell you where it wants to go. Step back, listen, and follow its lead—you might be surprised by where it takes you. I typically “paint” from 10 feet away, studying the piece from a distance, like working through a chess game. If something feels off, I don’t rush to fix it. I analyze, wait, and make my next move when it’s time.
3️⃣ Walk away and work on something entirely different. Some battles aren’t meant to be fought in the moment. Giving a piece space can bring clarity, and sometimes the best breakthroughs happen when you’re not trying so hard. Many of my pieces take months, even years to fully come together because I wait for the right moment. If I’m tired or mentally exhausted, I step away—because forcing something out of exhaustion rarely leads to anything real.
I used to fight my own work. I’d get frustrated when things didn’t look like what I imagined. But over time, I realized something:
The best pieces I’ve ever made were the ones I stopped trying to control.
Art, just like life, has its own way of unfolding. It doesn’t always follow the sketch. It doesn’t always stay inside the lines. And sometimes, the best thing we can do is step back—whether that means adjusting, listening, or even walking away for a bit.
Because art isn’t just about forcing something into existence—it’s about discovering what it’s meant to be.
So the next time a piece fights back, don’t force it. Let it speak. See where it takes you.
It might just surprise you.
“Untitled”
© 2024 David Alan Sincavage. All Rights Reserved.
