The American painter Philip Guston once said; " Studio ghosts; when you're in the studio, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics...and one by one, if you're really painting, they all walk out. And if you're really painting, you walk out".
I know what he's talking about. Often you finish a work and cannot fathom exactly who it was that created it. You know it was you of course, but you cannot quite recognise that person. Artists can enter a state, I believe, when they act unconsciously, instinctively. I've often gone into the studio after a particularly late session the previous night and been surprised at what occurred. (And those late nights are often not a matter of choice; I'm loathe to leave until a piece is at least 'settled', not necessarily great but just ok, and if it's going well, well you cannot stop.)
My students are often paralysed by this phenomenon - the fear that you could not possibly recreate that mental state, that quality...the very real fear that to embark on a new piece of work is to invite disaster and to reveal the prior good work as fluke.
So, to that end, I'll be inviting as many studio ghosts in as I possibly can, hoping that they leave just as quickly as they arrived.
From the sketchbook...