Working Backwards, Thinking Forward.

A couple of weeks spent preparing for a contemporary Welsh art exhibition left me thinking differently about creativity and process, although not for the reasons I expected.

At the beginning of the week, I submitted five pieces of work for the exhibition.

Realistically, I am genuinely happy with three of them, which, for most artists, is probably a fairly honest and acceptable outcome. Some pieces arrive exactly as you hoped. Others never quite become what you imagined, no matter how much time you spend with them.

What interested me more, however, happened after the work had already been delivered.

The curator asked whether I had any preparatory sketches or development work that could accompany the finished pieces. It was a reasonable question, except for one small problem.

I do not really work that way.

I have always been a fairly instinctive artist. I rarely sit down and carefully map out compositions in sketchbooks before beginning a final piece. Most of the preparation happens internally long before anything touches paper or canvas.

Ideas build gradually through observation, atmosphere, memory and reaction. By the time I start physically making something, I am usually responding in the moment rather than following a structured plan.

Once the work begins, I tend to keep moving until something starts to feel alive.

So, faced with the request for preparatory work, I decided to do something slightly unusual. Instead of searching for sketches that did not exist, I worked backwards. I began creating the sort of loose studies and exploratory pages that looked as though they should have come before the finished artwork.

At first, it felt slightly artificial, almost like reconstructing evidence of a process after the event. But the more I worked, the more interesting it became.

One sketch in particular carried an energy that I now think may actually exceed the final piece itself. It was rougher, less resolved and far less careful, but it also felt freer. It still contained movement and possibility. Nothing had been overworked or forced into place.

It made me realise how often we assume that good creative work must emerge through careful planning and refinement, when in reality many ideas are discovered through motion. Some people think best before they begin. Others only find clarity once they are already making, testing and responding.

Perhaps that is why unfinished ideas can sometimes feel so powerful. They still leave room for imagination.

And maybe that applies far beyond art.

Sometimes working backwards is exactly what allows us to think forward.