MARGUS VEISVEER - Blog #thesesMARGUS VEISVEER - Blog #theseshttps://www.margusveisveer.eu/blogs/tag/thesesThu, 05 Nov 2026 12:38:19 -0800http://zoho.com/sites/<![CDATA[Thoughts on Art: 100 Theses on Being an Artist]]>https://www.margusveisveer.eu/blogs/post/thoughts-on-art-100-theses-on-being-an-artist

Becoming an artist and being an artist are not the same thing.

Becoming an artist is a process of discovery. Being an artist is a continuous questioning of what you have discovered - and the willingness to question it again.

These one hundred theses are not rules for making art, nor are they instructions for others to follow. They are personal observations, convictions and questions shaped by experience, time and the act of creating.

They do not attempt to define what art should be or what an artist must become. They explore what it means to think independently, to develop one's own vision, to resist ready-made answers and to continue creating without knowing exactly where the process will lead.

They are not the final word on art. They are a record of an ongoing conversation with it.

1. This may look abstract at first. It isn't.
2. The first impression is not the whole painting.
3. Do not ask first what you see. Ask how what you see was made.
4. A painting can look abstract without having an abstract subject.
5. What appears to be a colour field may contain space, time and context.
6. The painting does not hide an image. It reveals itself through looking.
7. The image is there. The question is how you learn to see it.

8. The image begins at a distance. The experience begins up close.
9. Distance does not simply reveal detail. It changes how the painting is read.
10. My paintings are not meant to be seen from a single distance.
11. Come closer. Then step back. The painting changes.
12. A painting can contain more than one way of seeing.
13. The closer you look, the less the surface behaves like a single image.
14. What you see from a distance is only one state of the painting.
15. Do not stand still. The painting is not static either.

16. Look at the pigment, not only at the colour.
17. The important question is not only where the colour is, but how it got there.
18. Pigment has movement. My paintings make that movement visible.
19. Pigment is not simply placed on the canvas. It is directed.
20. Look at where the pigment gathers, disperses and changes direction.
21. The surface records the movement of the pigment.
22. What looks like texture may actually be the trace of directed movement.
23. The painting is built from movement, not simply from marks.
24. Pigment is not passive material. It can be directed.

25. I do not begin with the question of how to apply the paint. I begin with how to direct the pigment.
26. The tool is secondary. The direction of the pigment is primary.
27. The method is not the tool. The method is what the tool does to the pigment.
28. A brush is a tool. A blade is a tool. An elastic object is a tool. The method is none of them.
29. Directing Pigment is not a particular instrument. It is a way of working with pigment.
30. The same method can produce completely different paintings in different hands.
31. The tool does not define the method. The artist's relationship with pigment does.
32. I am not interested in inventing another tool. I am interested in changing what the artist does with pigment.

33. Painting can begin where application ends.
34. From applying paint to directing pigment.
35. A small change in the action can create a different kind of painting.
36. Directing Pigment changes the relationship between artist, medium and surface.
37. The medium is not only something to control. It is something to work with.
38. The artist does not simply impose a form on the paint. The artist directs its movement.
39. Control does not mean eliminating chance. It means working through it.
40. The painting emerges through the relationship between intention and the physical behaviour of pigment.

41. Every artist could direct pigment differently.
42. The method is shared. The language remains individual.
43. Directing Pigment does not ask artists to paint like me. It gives them another way to develop their own language.
44. Different tools can create different relationships with pigment.
45. Your signature may not be the tool you use, but the way you make pigment move.
46. The future of the method belongs not only to its originator, but to what other artists may do with it.

47. Oil paint can do more than we normally ask it to do.
48. I am interested in what happens when oil paint is treated as a moving material.
49. Directing Pigment opens another field of possibilities for oil painting.
50. This is not watercolour. It is oil paint behaving differently.
51. The optical effect may resemble watercolour, but the medium is oil.
52. Oil painting does not have to remain bound to the traditional ways of applying oil paint.

53. My paintings have a physical grammar.
54. That grammar begins with the movement of pigment.
55. Pigment, movement and space work together.
56. The surface is not merely where the image sits. It is where the movement happens.
57. The structure you see is the visible consequence of how pigment was directed.
58. The method is invisible in the finished painting, but its consequences are everywhere.

59. The space in my paintings is not created only by perspective.
60. Space can emerge from the movement and distribution of pigment.
61. The surface can become a space.
62. There is a space between pigment and image.
63. The painting moves between surface and space.

64. I am interested in states of transition.
65. I do not only move objects through space. I move them through time.
66. An object can remain recognisable while its time changes.
67. I shift objects into another time or another state.
68. Time can be represented not only by an image, but by transformation.
69. The painting can hold a moment between what was and what may become.
70. A moment can be suspended without becoming still.

71. Pigment can hold a state of tension.
72. The pigment is not merely showing tension. It is part of what creates it.
73. Suspension is not only a subject. It is a physical condition within the painting.
74. A painting can exist in a critical state.
75. Critical Suspension is a state between stability and change.

76. Collapse is not necessarily the destruction of an object. It can be the collapse of a state.
77. A structure can collapse while the image remains.
78. Sometimes the image begins to collapse before the subject does.
79. Collapse can happen in space, in time, and in the image itself.
80. The painting can hold the moment before, during and after collapse.

81. A photograph captures one distance. The painting contains many.
82. Photography captures the image. It cannot fully capture the experience.
83. What you see online is only the beginning.
84. The real encounter begins in front of the painting.
85. The camera fixes the distance. The viewer can change it.
86. Some paintings need to be walked through with the eyes.

87. Do not try to understand the painting immediately. Look first.
88. Give the painting time to change in front of you.
89. Stay with the painting long enough for another image to appear.
90. The painting does not ask for a single interpretation. It asks for attention.
91. The painting is not finished when you recognise it. That is where looking begins.
92. Look again. Not closer. Differently.

93. Impressionism changed what is seen from a painting. My paintings change how a painting is viewed.
94. The painting is not only what you see. It is also how you come to see it.
95. I am not changing only the image. I am changing the relationship between pigment, painting and viewer.
96. The method changes the surface. The surface changes the image. The image changes the way you look.
97. From pigment to movement. From movement to structure. From structure to space. From space to meaning.
98. The method is the key. The painting is what happens when that key opens the surface.
99. The tool can be replaced. The principle remains: pigment can be directed.
100. The next chapter of oil painting may begin not with a new tool, but with a new relationship to pigment.

I do not offer these theses as answers. I offer them as the ground from which I continue to work.

Being an artist is not about arriving at an answer. It is about continuing to see what you have not yet understood.

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BEYOND SEEING

My Ten Theses on Becoming an Artist

8 August 2026

Recognition does not play as great a role as it is often given credit for. It may bring joy, but only for a moment. True happiness lies in one’s own development.

Perfection is not the end of development. Once a work is finished, we begin to see its flaws. The next one will be better. That is development. That is happiness.

Those who simply copy become dependent on what they see. A realist may be an excellent copier, but that does not make them a true artist. They remain dependent on the visible world.

You cannot truly paint water, a gust of wind, or the splash of a wave directly from nature, because they change too quickly. The artist has to create them - to conceive the image rather than simply copy what is in front of them.

The Impressionists tried to capture the impression of nature as quickly as possible. You can paint in front of nature for three years, yet the best work may still emerge in the studio, from memory. A viewer cannot remain indefinitely with an impression, because an impression is a moment - much like scrolling on a phone, where another already “painted” impression immediately appears.

A better work is one that makes you stop and look for a long time. A truly strong work invites you to look again. And even then, it is not a perfect work.

The works that can hold our attention for a long time are often those created from memory and imagination.

Water is a living force that human beings cannot control. Not even the artist. We can only direct the pigment. I try to understand how water behaves. My task is to convey something that direct imitation of nature cannot capture.

Imitating other artists harms an artist’s independent development. You can certainly learn technique from another artist, but everything else must come from your own observation and your own artistic impression.

I do not consider an artist’s talent to be the ability to see something accurately. I consider it to be what they are able to retain after the act of seeing is over - and what they are able to discover from it.

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