On Finishing

Finishing a work leaves me in a split state of mind: on the one hand, I am proud of it and therefore am glad to see the piece in its completed form; on the other hand, I feel spent of energy from creating it, particularly if it took a long time to complete.

I just finished a complex wall hanging that I had been working on for months. A lot of my concentration went into it, from the initial planning to the piecing to the quilting and finally to the embellishments and final touches. Even while I was working on other pieces and enjoying the creative process with them, part of my mind was distracted by what I was planning or simultaneously working on this other piece. I wanted to get everything "right" with it, from the technical parts of the quilting to the symbolic use of colors and patterns.

When I finally finished it, my first reaction was that I didn't like it. However, I realized that was more a reaction to the weight of what I had been experiencing than to the piece itself. I had spent so many months and a lot of energy on creating it that I was exhausted and overly critical of my work. I saw mistakes that others did not see. I saw things I meant to say differently, to present differently. In other words, I was so close to it that I couldn't separate my expectations from the completion.

After setting it aside for a day, I looked at it again with "fresh eyes" as my mom says. My feelings had become much more positive by then and I was once again proud of my work and what I had done. The exhaustion was abated and therefore the criticism was set aside to become lessons for the future rather than regrets of the past.

Today I feel it is one of my best pieces to date. I have learned that these are feelings that other artists have as well. While each of us experiences them uniquely, the fact that we have a shared response to our completed work makes this journey less lonely and much more comforting.