Satisfaction is but a moment: Isabel Santos

Life is often marked by the big moments that add up to a month, a year, a decade. These are the points that one remembers vividly and quickly, a life lived marked by significant moments, whether by their historical importance, or the magnitude of emotion they have imparted on the one who experiences them. In Satisfaction is but a Moment, Isabel Santos ruminates on the point at which these big moments fade in her memory, or coalesce into the past. “Before you know it, the moment has come and gone.”

The presence of these opportunities are always reasons for gratefulness, and they represent boundless opportunities to create work. And yet, when the act of making are bookended by deadlines, it comes with anxiety, guilt, and pressure, particularly to those who are more acutely attuned to these feelings and emotions.

The Sisyphean task of producing work, constantly, with the metaphoric boulder rolling down the hill as soon as one reaches the end of one project and succeeds. There is little time to celebrate the triumphs in the face of preparing for the next arduous task, and these momentous milestones fade into the background.

In many ways, Santos is still in the process of puzzling out the different aspects of her artistic practice, often figuring out where these pieces may fit. The pressure to create work that is both resonant with an audience, readily established by the setting this project will inhabit (i.e. a solo exhibition at a gallery), and deeply connected to her own creative expression, where she seeks to not merely recreate previously lauded works or rehash a formula that worked out for her. In every endeavour, Santos seeks to go beyond what she has tried, but in a way that is true to her.

Satisfaction is but a moment is a collection of work, reclaiming the joy of actually making them. Stuck in a cycle of overcommitment and panic, Santos pivots here to a process and mindset that focusses only on making work imbued with her enjoyment, casting off the pressure and anxiety of something she needs to get done, and done well. Instead of overthinking the conceptual aspect of this collection of work, Santos chose to focus instead on the freedom it lent her when she first started to paint.

Recalling Robert Rauschenberg’s “Erased de Kooning Drawing” where the artist meticulously erased each mark of a valuable drawing by William de Kooning, Santos thought, “What if I can erase it?” What if every stroke didn’t mean so much? What if making art didn’t have to feel so heavy?

The strokes then flowed freely; the notion of them potentially being erased or painted over later on released the tension she was feeling that prevented her from even beginning. Throughout this process and armed with this mindset, Santos communed with the images and reached a point where she was happy. She suddenly didn’t need the crutch of erasure to feel satisfied and proud of the work. With the opening up of the possibilities for her future projects, one must imagine her happy. — Carina Santos