Developing an art project

Projects rarely end where they start. They begin as a thought, question, or persistent feeling. For me, it often starts with a word I cannot forget.

For a time, I thought my next work would focus on small, everyday griefs. These are the losses that pass by because they are too ordinary to notice. I started to ask questions: what do we lose without seeing it? What happens when there is no time to grieve? How does absence shape us?

Yet, as I kept asking, I realised my focus shifted from grief to belonging. I saw I was not looking at what people lose, but at what they try to keep: the places, gestures, and structures that help us feel safe when things change. That shift became the starting point for The Dictionary of Arctic Homes and Shelters.

With this new direction, following an idea became a balance between planning and instinct. Research gives shape, but instinct chooses the direction. I study, take notes, and let the idea grow. This is a quiet season, a time of stillness before making. When the time is right, the project takes form and the work begins.

During this period, boundaries help guide my work. Each project sets its own limits: theme, method, tone. Without limits, ideas can go too far. In The Dictionary of Arctic Homes and Shelters, the Arctic was the boundary. Five regions, two ways of seeing, one question about home. The limits made the work possible.

As the project develops, progress does not move in a straight line. There are sketches, false starts, and failed experiments. The visual research, the looking, discarding, and waiting, is part of the work. I have learned that what does not work still shows the way.

Along this path, sometimes I ask others what they think, not about the project but about the subject. Their answers change how I see. Other voices show me what I have missed and help me understand what the work wants to say.

Through these conversations and discoveries, every project reaches a point where it tests its own truth. There is a moment when research ends and instinct takes over. I know it by its stillness, when the idea starts to breathe on its own.

Eventually, letting go is part of the work. Not every idea becomes a finished project. Some stay as notes, some end before they begin, and some wait for years. I do not see this as a failure. It is the rhythm of a creative life: rest, observation, making, return.

Ultimately, developing a project is not about control. It is about trust. You plan, learn, observe, then let the work lead.