Don't Ruin the Illusion

Knowing what not to share.

The Treachery of Images, René Magritte, 1929

Years ago I taught an oil painting class for illustrators. One day in class I demonstrated how you could take your photographic reference and change it to suit your artistic goals. For the demo I added a beard not shown in the reference, a simple technical point about how we’re not slaves to our source material and how we can push and pull reality.

Later in the year, my gallery asked if I had any additional paintings lying around the studio that might be worthy of framing and displaying at the next art show. I said I had these class demos and they encouraged me to bring them in. So my bearded friend was framed and hung and, remarkably, sold to a new collector.

About a year later at an opening, the gallery director introduced me to a client who had purchased some work and wanted to meet me. She was a lovely person and I was so appreciative of her spending her hard-earned cash on my painting. It’s a humbling exchange, someone choosing to live with what you’ve made, to give it wall space in their home, to pass by it every day.

When I asked her what piece she had gotten, she mentioned this painting of a dramatically lit bearded man done in oil. I knew exactly which painting she was referring to. She was excited as she described it and asked me about who this person was and why I had made the choice to paint him. What was his story?

I answered in a matter-of-fact way, describing the class, and the exercise of adding the beard. I was being generous in pulling back the curtain, showing her the real process, treating her as an insider rather than just a consumer. I often do this because I want to be understood and I am very interested in the technical side of art making. I want people to know that I am thoughtful craftsperson, not just a vessel for divine inspiration.

When I looked at her face at the conclusion of my story, she was crestfallen.

I realized right away that I had said the wrong thing. She had invented a whole story around this painting that I had just casually dismantled. What I had done was a technical exercise. What she had bought was a mysterious stranger with a hidden past, perhaps someone she once knew or wished she had known. She had projected meaning onto those brushstrokes, and that meaning was real, even if it had nothing to do with my intentions in that classroom.

I had broken the spell.

Here’s what I learned: People who do not work in the creative arts see what we do as magic and sometimes look to us as miracle workers, molding clay or paint into art. Sometimes this isn’t how we see our own efforts. We see the technical problems we solved, the happy accidents we capitalized on, the reference photos we borrowed from, the days we showed up uninspired and pushed through anyway. We see the scaffolding.

But they don’t need to see the scaffolding. And I don’t think they want to.

This isn’t about lying. I’m not suggesting you invent elaborate fictional backstories for your work or pretend that everything springs fully formed from your imagination. But I am suggesting that there’s a difference between honesty and oversharing, between authenticity and deflation.

When someone tells you what they see in your work, they’re offering you a gift. They’re telling you what it means to them, how it’s become part of their inner landscape. And when we respond by explaining away that meaning—”oh, it’s just a class demo,” “I was really just experimenting with lighting,” “that color choice was actually a mistake”—we’re not being more honest. We’re just choosing our truth over theirs. And frankly, it lands with a dud.

The tension here is real. Many artists value authenticity and are uncomfortable being put on pedestals. Some want to demystify the creative process, especially in an age when art can seem remote and inaccessible to so many people. There’s something democratic and generous about saying “here’s how it’s actually made.”

But there’s also something arrogant about it. We assume our intention matters more than their interpretation. We assume the technical story is more real than the emotional one.

The truth is, once we release work into the world, it’s not entirely ours anymore. That painting stopped being a class demo the moment it left my studio. It became whatever that woman needed it to be. And her story—the one she invented in her living room, looking at those brushstrokes—was just as valid as mine. More valid, perhaps, because she was actively living with it.

I think about that moment often, especially when I’m tempted to explain my process in too much detail. I think about it when someone asks about a painting and I feel that familiar urge to be comprehensive, educational, transparent. Now I pause. I turn the tables. I ask them what they see, what drew them to it, what story they’ve told themselves about it.

It’s much more fun this way. For them and for me.

When I let viewers tell me what they see, I often learn something about my own work that I hadn’t recognized. I discover meanings I never intended but that are nevertheless present in the marks I made. Sometimes their interpretations are more interesting.

The illusion isn’t that we’re superhuman. The illusion is that the work contains something worth discovering—and that illusion is actually true. What we make does contain mysteries, even to us.

So don’t break the spell. Your audience isn’t asking to be deceived. They’re asking to be enchanted.