Cherry Jeffs : “Repeating a process can teach us important lessons about subtle variation and refinement.”
Just found something absolutely brilliant, on the site of Cherry Jeffs, about what a body of work is. In this Cherry also talks about what repetition teaches us about refinement. Brilliant.
“In the early stages of discovering who we are as artists, it’s natural to want to try out lots of different techniques, media and subject matter. But for many of us, this kind of exploration can go on far too long! The result? Extreme frustration that we haven’t ‘found our voice’.
Constantly exploring different ways of working is exciting. But it’s also exhausting - and that makes it difficult to maintain over the long term.
This is one of the reasons why it can feel like an uphill struggle to make art regularly. When we don’t have a clear direction, it’s easy to get charged up to begin. But after a while, our enthusiasm peters out and we dry up. Eventually we restart in a different direction.
Repeating a process can teach us important lessons about subtle variation and refinement. But when we charge all over the map like this, we don’t get to learn these lessons.
It was only when I focussed on building a body of work, that I finally started to make art that spoke with a strong, personal and unique creative voice.
So, above any other considerations, the single, most important reason for building a body of work lies at the heart of your creative work: It helps you refine your voice, and the direction of your practice, so you can keep going over the long haul.”
Reference
Jeffs, C. (n.d.). What is a body of work? Cherry Jeffs. Retrieved March 18, 2025, from https://www.cherryjeffs.com/whatisabodyofwork