From Here On

Sometimes a little too much water is enough.

A line grows wider than I wanted it to. The black spreads further. My first impulse is to do something about it.

I could lift some of the water, change the area, or continue working somewhere else. Perhaps what bothers me now would barely be noticeable later. But I cannot return the line to the state it was in before this moment. I can only change it.

From here, I have to continue.

That sounds obvious at first. Yet while working, I notice how quickly I behave as though a decision could simply be taken back. I correct, rework, make something denser or take something away, sometimes hoping to return to an earlier possibility.

But a correction does not take me back.

If I lift water from the paper, the surface changes. If I rework an area, a new density emerges. An additional line shifts the relationship to what is already there. Perhaps what first seemed wrong is barely visible afterwards. But something else has appeared in its place.

Sometimes the attempt to save an area changes the image more than what I first thought was a mistake. That interests me. Not because mistakes are automatically good. I have little use for that idea. An unexpected mark does not become interesting simply because it was unplanned. Some things disturb. Some things simply do not work. Some things I should have done differently.

The material does not make that decision for me. I still have to decide what to do with it.

Of course, there is a great deal I can influence. I choose the paper, the brush, the amount of water. I decide where a movement begins and often the direction it takes. The better I know a material, the better I can judge how it is likely to behave.

Knowing what to expect is still not the same as determining what will happen.

With the first stroke, something begins that until then existed only as an idea. Perhaps I had a fairly precise image in mind. Perhaps only a movement, a density, or a relationship between two areas.

Then there is a mark on the paper. The idea I had has not disappeared. But it is no longer alone. From that moment on, I work with what that mark has changed. When I intervene again, I am already responding to something I set in motion myself but could not fully foresee. The next intervention therefore takes place under different conditions from the first.

Perhaps that is why the word control often feels too crude when I work. It sounds as though I have to choose between two possibilities: either I determine what happens, or I let it happen.

That is not how I work.

Sometimes I guide a movement very precisely. Then, in one area, I let something happen because intervening immediately would destroy more than it would improve. A little later, I intervene deliberately again. I notice this most clearly when I am correcting something.

An area may bother me because it genuinely does not work. But it may also bother me because it has become different from what I imagined. Those are not the same thing. Yet in the moment of working, I cannot always tell the difference easily.

My first impulse can be very strong. Something is there that I did not want, and immediately I want to change it. The faster I react, the easier it is to overlook that the rest of the image has changed in the meantime as well.

Then perhaps I am not correcting what is actually in front of me. I am trying to rescue my earlier idea.

By now, another question matters more to me than whether an area works or not:

Am I still responding to the image in front of me, or am I trying to hold on to an idea that no longer exists in that form?

Sometimes I only know after I have continued working.

A correction can calm an area. It can also create a new restlessness. A denser passage meant to balance something out may suddenly give another area more weight. A new mark changes a distance, and that in turn changes what lies beside it.

This is how a work continues. It does not follow a straight path from an idea to its execution, but neither is it simply a sequence of accidents. I make decisions. Their consequences become part of the conditions under which I make the next ones.

For me, this is something different from simply letting go. Letting go can easily sound as though intervening less is always better. As though I only need to stop imposing my will and trust the material.

That too would be too simple for me.

Sometimes an image needs a decisive intervention. A mark can interrupt the movement within it. A denser area can hold the eye in a place that previously carried little weight. Sometimes a decision simply does not work. Then I work on it. But I cannot pretend that what has happened can be erased.

For me, correcting does not mean returning to an earlier state. It means doing something with the state that exists now.

The work may move a long way from my first idea as a result. That does not automatically make it worse.

Sometimes, after several interventions, I notice that something has emerged that I could not have planned at the beginning. At other times, I see that I have kept changing a work without it gaining anything from those changes. Both happen.

That is why I do not want to turn the unexpected into a method. If I deliberately tried to create surprises, they too would eventually become a kind of planning. If I left every deviation untouched because it was supposedly more alive or more truthful, that would simply be another rule.

What interests me more is what is actually there after a decision. Perhaps that is why I move so often between intervening and observing. I have to do something for anything to emerge at all. Afterwards, I have to see what that intervention has set in motion. Then I decide again.

Not everything remains visible. An area can be reworked. A line can disappear beneath a darker area. Water can shift pigment until an earlier boundary is barely recognisable.

I no longer need to be able to see what was there before. What matters is that I responded to it while it was part of the image.

A fixed plan can only help me so much while I work. It can give me a direction and tell me what I want to begin with. But it cannot anticipate what will emerge during the process. Neither can I.

That does not mean I simply have to follow the image as though it had a will of its own. The image does not know what is right. The paper gives me no answer. Water has no intention.

The decisions remain mine. I simply no longer make them in front of an empty surface. I can intervene and change things, but the previous state is no longer available to me.

Eventually, something lies in front of me that I did not fully plan, but that I helped create step by step.

I put down the first line. Water spread. The paper absorbed the ink. Then I made another decision. And then another.

Where my intention ends and the material begins is difficult to determine.

Perhaps I do not need to.

I can only continue from what is here now.