How do you find meaning in your art?

@faithfulCoconut848

I try not to find meaning in my art because it feels more organic that way and i can enjoy the process of creating. if there's meaning it will surface naturally, if that makes sense.

@faithfulCoconut848 I know what you mean. I found that I was making my paintings for others. Then one day when I visited my daughter I saw all my Christmas and Birthday cards framed and I realised that there was pleasure in giving but so much more pressure in receiving. I stopped sending hand-painted cards after that. As a family, we all agreed to stop sending cards, but I realised that the meaning of my cards was to really freeze frame a moment in their life and preserve it.

Now, I paint for me! Think what you want to hold in frozen scraps of time and see forever! I choose to paint for me now, something may inspire me but often I just doodle paint, or grab a pencil and neurographically draw!

Some examples of neurographic art, it is akin to mindful art

Listening - One Step At A Time!

@faithfulCoconut848

I typically work to use art as a form of self expression so the meaning in the work is essentially whatever thoughts or emotions I was expressing through the art. Sometimes that means the meaning was I needed to find calm and comfort in familiar colours and simple shapes.

Some may want to find deeper meanings or more thoughtful representations but that can sometimes create more pressure and demotivate us from creating. I've often found with any art piece while the artist may intend one meaning or interpretation, the observer brings their own thoughts and feelings and finds new meanings that the artist did not intend but exist for that observer just the same.

So in a way a piece's meaning may grow as it is shared with more people who are able to bring their own experience to imbue the piece with greater significance than it seems to hold at first.

Just my thoughts. Hope you will create something soon to share with us, perhaps then you could ask others what meaning they see in your work?

I do car illustrations as a side gig.  It's a material object so really has no meaning to me but does to the owner of the vehicle.  The outsider art pieces I do tell my recovery story in a symbolic and graceful way.  Do the people who view the paintings see the story hidden within? Doesn't matter...I'm compelled to paint, it's a constructive coping mechanism, the process is more important than the outcome.  When folks ask me what the meaning is...and not being comfortable talking to strangers about my life struggles, personal beliefs etc, I ask "What does it mean to you?"  People don't always need or want a meaning, for some my painting fits with decor, or their business, and that's all it is "a decoration." 

@Ogrin93 I agree, sometimes I paint for a new room decoration, I am terrible and hate to part with any painting lol.

Listening - One Step At A Time!

@MistyMagic  I can relate to that.  Commission work is a little easier to let go of but my recovery pieces typically stay with me and I enter them in juried shows or local art exhibitions where they may be out of the house for 6-12 months but they return.  Like my children they are my creations and I miss them when they aren't around. 

@faithfulCoconut848 I usually just draw cartoons so my art has little to no meaning other than to make me laugh. If your working on Abstract art just get some colors that reflect your emotion and paint in lines or streaks that also reflect it (Zigzags for anger, curves of mellow Etc.)

Either I don't worry about it--whatever meaning is in the piece will be discovered by the viewer--or, if I'm working on a more personal piece, the meaning is already there. (Usually it has to do with chronic illness or with decline, de@th & decay in general. I get morbid at times)