There is often, though not always, an initial driving impression to be clothed in one’s medium. An artist in any medium is really a kind of translator, and although language is often an element in that translation, it is not simply a language to language transformation (as if that is simple!). In any translation things are lost and gained. Translation can and should be an intensely creative endeavor. Are we being true to the message? If so, in what ways? What it means? How it feels? It’s metaphorical and spiritual significance? True to the weight or lightness of the initiating impression? Is it smooth or staccato? Does it yell or whisper? Does the new medium allow for these things? Must other means, absent in the “driving impulse,” be applied in order to better convey what it “is” and not always just how it “looks” or “sounds” or what we think it “means,” etc.? Are we unable to translate the impulse, but find ourselves exploring an altogether new thing that we would never have found without that initial attempt? Sometimes there is not an initiating impulse beyond just looking for something and these can even be among the best and truest works. This is the sort of mess I wade through at the studio. Actually I think I never stop wading. Wading implies shallow water. It isn’t.
