Arteliance

I am asked to talk about my art sometimes. I sense that hunger for understanding within the audience. I used to feel pressurised to come up with answers to satisfy that hunger. I have learned that it can lead to me coming up with hurried and spurious interpretations of my own work.

Such is the status that meaning can have over feeling that I bow to the pressure and engage what Steven Pinker calls the “Baloney Generator.” This is our rational self that is so uncomfortable with the potential ambiguity of an emotional motivation that it will try to pin things down with desperately formulated rationales. The cleverer we are the better we are at making up more convincing meanings and reasons.

Nowadays I employ a more open strategy and talk about the things I was looking at and thinking about when I was making a particular piece and leave it up to the audience to make their own direct connections. This feels more satisfying and true than any nailed-down explanation.

Trust your own reactions, don’t seek enlightenment Grayson Perry

via ArtsJournal