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People usually encounter artworks in their final form: framed, lit, carefully presented in a gallery or posted online. By the time a painting appears on Instagram or enters an exhibition, most traces of uncertainty have disappeared. The work looks resolved, intentional, almost effortless.

What visitors rarely see is everything that came before.

An artist’s studio is filled with failed works, warped paper, abandoned attempts, and endless repetition. Especially when working with ink on paper, things can go wrong very quickly. Too much water buckles the surface. One accidental mark can ruin the entire balance of a composition. Sometimes a painting collapses in a matter of seconds.

There are stacks of works that never leave the studio, let alone make it onto social media.

And then there is the repetition nobody talks about: testing the same gesture over and over, adjusting tones, flattening paper, starting again. I believe much contemporary painting is built through repetition and small adjustments rather than sudden inspiration.

Doubt is part of the artistic process too. Not necessarily dramatic, soul-searching doubt, but a constant questioning: is it finished? Is it working? Am I repeating myself, or bringing something new to the conversation?

What fascinates me today is the growing gap between studio reality and social media. Online, artworks appear as clean, finished objects, accompanied by polished studio photographs and seamless narratives of creativity. The hesitations, failed attempts, and technical frustrations that I am sure other artists experience too, are mostly edited out.

To my mind, that invisible side is a fundamental part of the work. A painting is not only the final image people see. It also contains all the failed attempts, adjustments, and uncertainties that made its existence possible. Perhaps that is what gives an artwork its presence in the end: not perfection, but everything it survived before reaching the wall.