Art For Yourself, Art For Exhibition

I love making art. I'm drawn to it. It's a way of life, a passion. I get an idea and then I immediately have to drop everything and try it out. I feel compelled to share my experiments, techniques and ideas with others. I enjoy teaching adults and kids to make their own creations.

I like seeing my work in a gallery and of course enjoy spending any money from selling my work. But it's not the reason I make art, it's not my passion. Many times I don't care if an artwork ever progresses from an experiment to a finished piece or gets hung in a gallery.

My art group has an exhibition coming up next year with the theme "Contradiction and Contrast". I'm finding it very difficult to work within the theme - which is crazy because it was me that came up with the idea for the theme!

We've been working all year on expanding our ideas for our exhibition pieces. I've enjoyed this and have come up with some nice ideas but to me that's the exciting bit, having the ideas and making plans, now I'm ready to move onto something else. I need to act on my ideas almost immediately after having them or I get bored.

I enjoy being spontaneous in my art which keeps it fresh and exciting for me. I'm more interested in the process rather than what turns out at the end. Of course not planning anything has a few disadvantages too; like the piece ending up just a little too big or small for a frame, or the composition being not quite right, or one layer getting ruined by the next because I've done it in the wrong order. Textiles especially need a bit more planning than other things like art journals.

One of my most popular pieces of late, the woven sari bottles below, was totally unplanned. It went from an idea in the shower to being made almost immediately and I really enjoyed the process and how it turned out. It was clearly inspired by things I've been doing in my sketchbook but it was never planned or thought out. It has nothing to do with 'Contrast and Contradiction'! At this rate I'll have nothing for the exhibition. I wonder how important it is to stick with the theme of an exhibition? A theme seems to help many people develop an idea but for me I think making whatever comes to mind and then later seeing whichever exhibition it might fit into is a better way forward.

I'd love to know what you think. Do you like to plan or are you more spontaneous? What are the advantages and drawbacks? How (if at all) do you work towards an exhibition theme? Let me know in the comments below.