Latest news with #artprocess
Forbes
02-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Art Of Productive Creativity: Lessons In Slowing Down To Speed Up
Nora Herting, Founder & CEO of ImageThink. I've always had a bias toward efficiency. I like to move fast. Life is exciting, and there's so much to do. For as long as I can remember, I've been drawn to the energy of action—checking things off, hitting deadlines, pushing forward. In the corporate world, this mindset is often celebrated: more tasks completed, more projects shipped, more measurable output. Productivity is king. But over the years, I've learned that the straightest line isn't always the fastest path, especially when it comes to creativity. This lesson came into focus early in my career, in a moment that forever changed how I think about work. I was a graduate assistant for a celebrated installation artist who was preparing for a museum show in Paris. For two weeks, I worked alongside another one of her assistants, meticulously carrying out the artist's instructions. We arranged objects, moved materials and completed what we thought were final steps. But each day, she would return and change everything. At first, I was frustrated. It felt like we were spinning our wheels and redoing work that had already been done. I voiced my concerns to my colleague, who gently helped me see a perspective I hadn't considered: We were an extension of the artist—this was her creative process. That realization was transformative. She wasn't indecisive or disorganized. She was exploring, refining and allowing the work to evolve. The changes weren't a waste of time; they were part of getting to the final vision. Creativity, I learned, is often nonlinear. It thrives in the in-between spaces—the pauses, the iterations, the willingness to take a step back and reconsider. This isn't just true in the art world. It's true everywhere. In business, we're conditioned to prioritize speed and efficiency. We focus on the metrics we can measure: productivity, output and return on investment. But creativity—the source of true innovation and lasting impact—doesn't always fit neatly into a spreadsheet. And if we're not careful, we risk optimizing our way out of the very breakthroughs that move us forward. So, how do we balance the drive for productivity with the need for creativity? Here are three principles I've found helpful for leaders navigating this tension: 1. Make room for uncertainty. Creativity flourishes when there's space to think, explore and iterate. It's uncomfortable—and often inefficient—to linger in ambiguity, but it's where new ideas take root. As leaders, we need to normalize this process. Build in time for reflection, unstructured brainstorming and what might feel like 'slowing down.' Protect that space, even when deadlines loom. 2. Think in loops, not lines. Productivity tends to follow a linear model: Greater input leads to greater output. But creative work is cyclical. It requires revisiting ideas, gathering feedback and making adjustments. Leaders who value creativity must be willing to step off the straight path and embrace the loop: Test, refine, rethink. Ask your team, "What might we be missing by moving too quickly?" 3. Hold the urgency. Honor the process. Yes, deadlines matter. Yes, speed is important. But urgency without honoring the creative process can lead to burnout, disengagement and missed opportunities. The best leaders know when to push and when to pause. During high-pressure projects, check in regularly: Do you have the space to think? Are you aligned on what really matters? Sometimes a shift in perspective is all it takes to unlock something new. Looking back, I'm still the person who likes to move fast. I'm still energized by the excitement of getting things done. But I also know that some of the most meaningful moments—in art, in business and in life—come when we give ourselves permission to slow down, reconsider and try again. Productivity and creativity aren't opposing forces. They're partners in progress. By embracing both, we can unlock our full potential and discover the ideas that truly change the game. So, the next time you're racing toward a finish line, pause and ask: Where might a detour lead to an even greater breakthrough? Sometimes, the straight line isn't the fastest path. It's the winding road that takes you somewhere entirely new. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
The Guardian
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Painting's dangerous work!' The artist whose tools are brushes and power sanders
'I'm just trying to get one step ahead of my paintings,' says Megan Rooney, who is surrounded by the vibrant, gestural abstract works in her studio. She moves through the space restlessly as we chat, rocking on to her tiptoes and arching her arms through the air in an echo of the curving strokes in the paintings. She calls it 'dangerous work', her slow, fraught process of creation. 'After a decade of serious painting,' she says, 'I still feel bewildered and beguiled.' Rooney, 40, grew up in Canada and now lives in London, where she is preparing for her forthcoming show at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. She has a unique approach of adding and subtracting. She begins by adding paint to a blank canvas, then removes it with power sanders, then adds more on top, then removes it again, in a painstaking, almost bloody battle to find her way to the finished work. Each painting ends up with 10 or 15 other works beneath it. 'In the beginning of a painting's life,' she says, 'it's like meeting new people – superficial. Eventually they have something to tell me. In knowing and searching, the work finds its legs.' She seems both tortured and enraptured by the process. Its slowness sets her apart from many abstract painters, who tend to work in a rapid expressionist way. Rooney pushes back at being compared to them. Her paintings are defined by the prolonged accumulation of both paint, she says, and lived experiences, until they become strong enough to stand alone. 'I think that if you threw them out of the car on the highway, they'd just sprout legs and walk.' Most of the works are the same size, matching the wingspan of the average woman, although Rooney does make huge ones too, as well as murals. She refers to the works as 'people', telling me about their personalities and lineages. Heavily influenced by the seasons and the weather, they reflect the colour palette of their surroundings. 'The city is my main collaborator,' she says, although her works have a lot in common with much less urban paintings, too. There is a lot of late Monet here, and some of Joan Mitchell's verdant gestural brushstrokes. (An exhibition bringing Rooney and Mitchell together is open until October at Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing.) The magnetic, bright and varied colours pull you in. Each shade is so exact, so bright and flat: the warm, clay reds in Old Rome, painted this year, are set against the perfect cerulean and purple of an early evening Italian sky; the oddly matte lavenders that dot many of Rooney's new works are an icily satisfying periwinkle; the pale pinks make me think of French rococo painting and Gainsborough's aristocratic skirts. The canvases seem to glow. They are already old souls when they are first exhibited, after so many iterations on the way to the finish line. As we pace around the studio, pausing in front of works to survey them, Rooney tells me about the importance of movement in her practice. She has a background in dance, which is immediately apparent in the poised way she seems to move through the studio beside me, and she often commissions dance performances to accompany her exhibitions. A new one will take place at the opening of her new show, building on the ongoing story she has constructed of a doomed love between a moth and a spider. Rooney seems an unflinchingly serious artist. She is uninterested in self-promotion, although her work is critically acclaimed and has found both commercial and institutional support. 'The pursuit of art is a serious calling,' she says. 'If you don't care about it really fucking intensely, why should anybody else?' As she tells me about the relentlessness of her practice, it's clear that this isn't just something she says. 'You just have to sacrifice all the other things you wanted to do with your life,' she says. 'Painting is too demanding.' Rooney's attitude is refreshing amid an overly online culture that seems obsessed with easily digestible content and a quick laugh. Her paintings are beautiful (a word she doesn't shy away from) but also substantive. 'Beautiful is intellectual,' she tells me, recognising the complexity of humanity's capacity to create and seek it. 'The fight of producing culture isn't something to be taken lightly.' Surveying one of her paintings carefully, she nods and says quietly, almost to herself: 'I think that's a good painting.' Megan Rooney: Yellow Yellow Blue is at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London, from 12 June to 2 August
