The Individual Artist and Their Process

Inasmuch as we have seen art as a community or collaborative effort, many artists work alone in studios, dedicated to the singular idea of creating art through their own expressive means and vision. In the creative process itself there are usually many steps between an initial idea and the finished work of art.

Alfred J. Casson, 1943, Ontario Society of Artists, Black and White Photography

Artists will use sketches and preliminary drawings to get a more accurate image of what they want the finished work to look like. Even then they’ll create more complex trial pieces before they ultimately decide on how it will look. View and read about some of the sketches for Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica from 1937 to see how the process unfolds. Artists many times will make different versions of an artwork, each time giving it a slightly different look.

Some artists employ assistants or staff to run the everyday administration of the studio; maintaining supplies, helping with set up and lighting, managing the calendar and all the things that can keep an artist away from the creative time they need in order to work.


Fulcrum, Richard Serra, 1987

Some artists don’t actually make their own works. They hire people with specialized skills to do it for them under the artist’s direction. Fabricators and technicians are needed when a work of art’s size, weight or other limitations make it impossible for the artist to create it alone. For example, the size of the sculpture Fulcrum (see above) by Richard Serra necessitates additional staff be employed in the creative process. Glass artist Dale Chihuly employs many assistants to create and install his glass forms.


Glass art by Dale Chihuly at an extensive exhibition in Kew Gardens, London, in 2005