What the Drawing Wants to Be

Paul Klee, Three Houses, 1922

Long ago, I heard this story attributed to the 20th Century abstract painter, Paull Klee.

Someone asked Mr. Klee, “How do you come up with such imaginative paintings?”

He answered something like:

“Well, first I cut some wood and make a frame. Then I stretch a canvas over the frame. Then I prime the canvas, and by then I usually know what the painting wants to be.”

- Paul Klee

That quote has helped me clarify the meaning one of Klee’s more cryptic quotes:

“The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.”
- Paul Klee

That quote sounds to me like a Zen koan. Of course a painter paints what will be seen! But clearly, Klee doesn’t mean it in the practical way that what he paints will then be seen. If we relate the second quote to the first, then maybe what will be seen emerges out of what the painting wants to be.

But any artist can claim that what they painted is what the painting wanted to be. Only in the case of an artist of the caliber of Paul Klee do I believe that what is painted really is what the painting wanted to be. Can we say that art sometimes achieves what the artwork wanted to be but more often falls short? And who is to say what the artwork wants to be?

If Klee really did say that he knows what his paintings want to be, I would interpret that more as a guiding spirit, a vision in the artist’s mind of what the painting wants to be. There’s no point arguing about whether or not the artist is right about what the painting wants to be because there’s no objective way to determine what the painting wants to be outside the artist’s mind.

Still, Klee’s quote means more to me that a mental game. If I equate what the painting wants to be and what will be seen I find myself, as an artist, driven to discover what the painting wants to be, however I may interpret that. I feel driven to discover what will be seen lurking in the blank page of the un-started work.

Fortunately, in my own work on The Art of Extreme Environments, I have much more than my own imagination to work from. I have been to the extreme environments I draw—Death Valley, Mt. Wai’ale’ale and others. I don’t want to draw the mental photograph of Death Valley or Mt. Wai’ale’ale that I have in my mind from seeing it firsthand. I want to draw what will be seen, not what I saw. And yes, I want to draw what the drawing wants to be, whatever that may be.