INTERPRETATION – BY YOU AND OTHERS
Interpretation is that fascinating, inexplicable processing of visual information as we see it. It’s the old ‘Do you see a candlestick or do you see two faces?’ – thing.
I don’t want this to sound in any way high-brow, but interpretation is something we should consider for various reasons.
I remember may years ago an artist acquaintance of mine attending a party produced a painting he’d done. I don’t remember what the subject was exactly, but seem to remember it had a slightly abstract feel to it. What I remember most about the occasion, though, was how downright put-out this artist was because others couldn’t see what he’d intended to convey. There were meant to be subtle undertones with an embedded sub-plot. The symbolic imagery was meant to speak for itself – but it didn’t. In fact, what happened was, others around him interpretted the painting in a completely different way altogether. Not at all what he’d hoped for!
What is worth considering here is that a painting can often be interpretted in more that one way. How often has someone said to you that they can ‘see’ something in one of your paintings that you never realised was there before? “I can see a horse in that cloud”, or “There’s a face looking out at me from that rock!”. You get the picture.
These are isolated instances, of course, but in the broader scheme of things, we should be prepared to accept that watercolour, in its innate unpredictability is going to throw up some surprises. Obviously, when putting a picture together, we have a sense of mood and narrative that we would like to convey, and should work towards that goal. Every brush mark contributes towards that very end. But likewise, an errant, unplanned brushmark may change the theme without us noticing, and errant, unplanned brushmarks are a way of life in watercolour painting.
There is always going to be a battle between what you intend and what someone looking at your work is going to see. If you can spot such variations early on, then it’s possible to turn the painting around to your way of thinking. If not, I would say it’s better to go with the flow, so to speak. Accept that others may interpret your painting with good grace. After all, if that painting ‘speaks to them’ in another language to your own, and strongly enough, it may be that you have a potential sale on your hands.
