I started posting photos of the paper before I paint on it
Small experiment the last three weeks. Along with the finished piece, I post a shot of the blank sheet, taped to my board, pencil grid barely visible, chai cup in the corner. No caption, no before/after, just the empty paper.
Engagement is roughly double the finished paintings. Same people who scroll past a finished sketch of a Malleswaram house will stop and stare at a damp sheet of Arches.
I have no idea what to do with this. On one hand it's lovely, people are curious about process. On the other, I spent eleven years learning to see and people want to look at the tape. My sister said it's because everyone can imagine themselves starting something, and nobody can imagine themselves finishing it. That stung a bit because I think she's right.
So now I'm sitting here wondering whether I keep doing it, because it works, or stop, because it feels like I'm selling the idea of painting rather than the painting. Anyone else had a thing that performs well but sits oddly with them?
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The blank sheet is the only honest part of the process. Everything after is decisions, and people can smell that decisions are opinions. The white paper is just possibility, no risk yet.
But I would not read it as people preferring the tape to your eleven years. They are standing at the door because the door is open. Very few artists leave it open.
One caution from someone who has filled rooms with other people's garbage. You put the empty sheet out long enough and it becomes the work. Audience will hand you an identity and then be annoyed when you refuse it. I have seen it happen with scaffolding, with dust, with a chair in a corner. It is fine, but notice when it happens, that is all.
Anyway. Keep the finished paintings, keep the damp paper, let them wonder. Curiosity is not contempt. It is just the sound of a person arriving.
"people can smell that decisions are opinions" is doing a lot of work there and I'm not sure I buy all of it. the blank sheet isn't honest, it's just undecided. no one's ever stood in front of an empty wall and felt something. the honesty is in the mark you're scared to make, not the one you haven't.
the second half though. yeah. you make the empty sheet the hook and pretty soon that's the brand, and every finished piece after it reads as a betrayal of it. watched a friend do that with process videos, took her two years to claw back out.
though I'd push on one thing: the crowd at the door isn't the same crowd that'll stay in the room. curiosity and attention aren't the same appetite. the tape gets the click, nobody's buying tape.
The empty wall line is good and I mostly agree, but I'd say the blank sheet is honest in a different way than you mean. It's honest about how much I don't know yet. The fear is real and it's in the room, it's just not visible. That's not the same as meaning nothing.
Where you've got me is the second half. Two years to claw back out is exactly the thing I want to avoid. I've been telling myself it's just documentation, but if the tape and the chai cup become the part people come for, the painting starts feeling like a formality. And it's the painting that took eleven years.
You cut off mid thought on the crowd at the door. What were you going to say there?
The line about the audience handing you an identity and then being annoyed when you refuse it, that one landed. I have been doing this for three weeks and already I feel it slightly, like the blank sheet is becoming the thing people follow me for. Which is exactly the trap you are describing.
But I don't fully buy the "only honest part" bit. The blank sheet is undecided, not honest. It hasn't cost me anything yet. The decisions are where I actually am, and some of them are wrong, and that is the part worth putting out. Maybe the door being open is the point and what's behind it still has to be the work.
Giving it a few more weeks and watching whether the finished pieces start to feel like an afterthought. If they do, I'll pull the blank sheet posts. Your garbage-rooms warning is noted, thanks for that.