The Inner Vision

Gelme: Usually I know the general thing I am going to make before I begin.

I may know, “Today I am making a poncho. It will be in these colors. I want this general shape.”

But the patterns change while I am working.

I may put down flowing stripes and then look at them and think, “Should I do this? Maybe this needs something else.”

So the general idea exists before I start, but the composition develops during the process.

The Other Voice: Then you are not really following a finished picture in your head.

You know the direction, but the piece itself becomes part of the conversation.

You make one decision, look at what happened, and that creates the next decision.

Gelme: Yes.

My decisions are very intuitive.

I look at something and I feel that it looks right or it does not.

It is too much.

It is too little.

Something is missing.

Or suddenly I look at it and think, “Yes. That is right.”

I do not consciously follow rules from art school.

It is more about the vision inside me.

The Other Voice: Maybe intuition is knowledge that has become so familiar that you no longer need to explain it to yourself.

Years of looking, making, correcting, comparing colors, proportions, movement, texture, and form may slowly become an internal visual judgment.

You do not have to say, “I am applying this rule.”

You simply see that something is wrong.

Or you recognize the moment when it finally works.

Gelme: I think that inner vision was built throughout my life.

Everything I have seen.

Everything I have experienced.

Things I learned, explored, liked, disliked, and judged for myself.

All of it becomes part of how I see.

But I also think we are born with something.

Maybe a tendency to notice certain things.

To see different aspects.

To want to know.

To explore.

The Other Voice: So perhaps artistic instinct is both inherited and built.

There may be something in a person from the beginning—a sensitivity, curiosity, or way of seeing.

But then life gives that instinct material.

Museums.

Nature.

Architecture.

Clothing.

People.

Color.

Beauty.

Mistakes.

Years of making things with your own hands.

Eventually all of that becomes something very personal.

A way of seeing that belongs to you.

Gelme: Yes.

And maybe that is why I cannot really create by asking, “What are people going to like?”

I can look at what other people do.

I can learn.

I can see trends.

But when I am actually creating, at some point I have to stop thinking about all of that.

I have to look at the piece and ask myself whether it feels right.

Because nobody else can see exactly the picture that is inside me.

The Other Voice: And perhaps that is where individuality begins.

Not in refusing influence.

Not in trying to be different.

But in allowing everything you have seen to pass through your own vision before it becomes something new.