How do artists make artworks, and what shapes their practice?
Artmaking practice: the practice of artists, including intentions, materials, processes, conceptual interests, and how practice develops across a career
A focused answer to the HSC Visual Arts dot point on artmaking practice. Defines practice, distinguishes material practice from conceptual practice, identifies the dimensions of practice (intentions, processes, materials, conceptual interests, world context), and applies the concept to named artists including Margaret Olley, Pablo Picasso, and Tracey Moffatt.
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What this dot point is asking
NESA expects you to define artmaking practice, distinguish it from art criticism and art history, identify its dimensions, and apply the concept to named artists. The concept of practice is one of the three Content Areas in the Visual Arts Stage 6 syllabus alongside the frames and the conceptual framework.
The answer
What is artmaking practice
Artmaking practice is the sustained activity through which artists produce artworks. NESA defines practice as encompassing the artist's intentions, choices, actions, and ideas. It is not a single moment of making but a pattern of engagement that develops across a career.
Practice has both material dimensions (the physical activity of making with tools and media) and conceptual dimensions (the ideas, intentions, and meanings the artist pursues). Strong Visual Arts answers always address both.
The dimensions of artmaking practice
Five dimensions recur in NESA's framing of artmaking practice.
- Intentions
- Why does the artist make work? Intentions can be personal, political, formal, spiritual, commercial, or some combination. Picasso painted Guernica (1937) with explicit political intentions; Margaret Olley painted still life with intimate, observational intentions.
- Processes
- How does the artist make? Processes include preparatory drawing, photographic source-gathering, collaboration, experimentation in a sketchbook or VAPD, studio routines, and revision. Brett Whiteley's process involved obsessive observation and a constant interplay of drawing, writing, and painting. Tracey Moffatt's process is heavily constructed and cinematic, with elaborate sets and casting.
- Materials and techniques
- What does the artist use? Materials range across the eight expressive forms (drawing, painting, photomedia, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, time-based forms). Patricia Piccinini works in silicone, fibreglass, and hair; Emily Kngwarreye worked in batik and then synthetic polymer paint on canvas.
- Conceptual interests
- What ideas does the artist pursue? An artist's conceptual interests are the recurring themes their work addresses. Banksy's conceptual interests include surveillance, consumerism, war, and the institution of art itself.
- Relationship to the world
- Where, when, and within what culture does the artist work? Albert Namatjira's practice cannot be separated from his life as an Arrernte man in the Hermannsburg mission. John Olsen's practice is inseparable from the Australian landscape and his time in Europe in the 1950s.
How practice develops across a career
Artists' practices change. Picasso moved from Blue Period figuration (1901-1904), to Rose Period (1904-1906), to Analytic Cubism (1908-1912), to Synthetic Cubism, to Neoclassicism, to Surrealism-influenced work in the 1930s, to the political mural Guernica (1937), to the late ceramics and sculpture of the 1950s and 1960s. Each phase reflects shifts in intentions, processes, conceptual interests, and world context.
Practice can also remain consistent across decades. Margaret Olley painted still life and interiors for six decades with remarkable continuity of subject and approach. Her practice is the opposite case to Picasso, not in quality but in stability.
Why the syllabus distinguishes the three practices
NESA distinguishes artmaking practice from art criticism practice (the practice of interpreting and judging artworks) and art history practice (the practice of situating artworks in temporal, cultural, and stylistic contexts). The three practices interact: artists are sometimes critics, critics often write history, and history is constructed from acts of criticism. But the distinction matters in the written exam, where questions are often framed at one of the three practices.
A common Section II prompt is: "Compare how artmaking practice and art criticism practice interpret the same artwork." Strong responses treat each practice as a distinct activity with its own protocols and outputs.
Past exam questions, worked
Real questions from past NESA papers on this dot point, with our answer explainer.
Practice (NESA)10 marksExplain how an artist's practice has developed across their career. Refer to specific artworks in your answer.Show worked answer →
A 10-mark explain demands three or four developed examples and a clear sense of change over time.
- Thesis
- Practice is not a single moment; it is a sustained engagement with materials, processes, and concepts that visibly changes across a career. Picasso's practice is the textbook case.
- Early practice (Blue Period, 1901-1904)
- Picasso's early Barcelona and Paris years produced figurative paintings dominated by blue tones (The Old Guitarist, 1903) and themes of poverty and isolation. Intentions: emotional, subjective. Materials: traditional oil paint on canvas. The practice is grief-driven (the suicide of his friend Casagemas in 1901).
- Middle practice (Analytic Cubism, 1908-1912)
- With Georges Braque, Picasso developed a faceted, monochrome pictorial language (Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910). Intentions: structural and theoretical. Materials: oil paint, but used to dissect form rather than describe it. Process: working closely with Braque, "like mountaineers roped together."
- Late practice (Guernica, 1937; later work)
- Picasso's practice expanded to mural-scale political work (Guernica, 1937) in response to the bombing of the Basque town. Intentions: political, public, monumental. Materials and form expanded. The artist is the same; the practice is unrecognisable.
- Conclusion
- Practice changes because intentions, contexts, and materials all change. Markers reward dated artworks, named periods, and explicit reference to dimensions of practice (intentions, processes, materials, conceptual interests).
Practice (NESA)5 marksDefine artmaking practice.Show worked answer →
A 5-mark define needs a precise definition plus an applied example.
- Definition
- Artmaking practice is the sustained activity of artists producing artworks. It encompasses the artist's intentions (why they make), processes (how they make), materials and techniques (what they use), conceptual interests (what they care about), and the relationship between their practice and the world in which they work.
- Distinction
- Artmaking practice is distinct from art criticism practice (the practice of interpreting and judging artworks) and art history practice (the practice of situating artworks in temporal and cultural contexts). All three are part of the broader concept of practice in NESA Visual Arts.
- Applied example
- Margaret Olley's artmaking practice was sustained over six decades, focused on still life and interior scenes painted in her cluttered Paddington studio. Her intentions were observational and aesthetic; her processes were daily, slow, and revisionist (she famously painted from arrangements built up in her own home); her materials were oil paint, watercolour, and gouache; her conceptual interests were domestic intimacy, light, and colour. The practice is recognisable across hundreds of works.
Markers reward the multi-part definition, the distinction from criticism and history, and a named applied example.
Related dot points
- Art criticism practice: the practice of critics, curators, and writers, including interpretation, judgement, the use of the frames, and the production of critical writing
A focused answer to the HSC Visual Arts dot point on art criticism practice. Defines criticism, distinguishes it from artmaking and art history, identifies its outputs (reviews, exhibition catalogues, critical essays), explores the use of the frames in criticism, and applies the concept to named critics including Robert Hughes and Sebastian Smee.
- Art history practice: the practice of historians, including the writing of art history, the construction of canons, the use of archives, and the situating of artworks within periods, movements, and cultures
A focused answer to the HSC Visual Arts dot point on art history practice. Defines art history, distinguishes it from criticism, identifies its outputs (textbooks, catalogues raisonnes, museum exhibitions, scholarly monographs), explores how historians construct movements and canons, and applies the concept to named historians including Bernard Smith, Sasha Grishin, and E.H. Gombrich.
- Margaret Olley (1923-2011): a case study of an Australian painter's sustained still-life and interior practice across six decades, including artist intentions, materials, the Paddington studio, and reception
A case study of Margaret Olley for HSC Visual Arts. Australian painter of still life and interiors across six decades, working from her Paddington studio. Materials, conceptual interests, key artworks including the AGNSW collection, frame readings, and audience reception.
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973): a case study of a Spanish-French painter, sculptor, ceramicist, and printmaker whose practice spans seven decades and multiple distinct phases, supported by frame readings and audience reception
A case study of Pablo Picasso for HSC Visual Arts. Spanish-French artist whose practice spans Blue Period, Rose Period, Cubism with Braque, neoclassicism, surrealism, the political mural Guernica (1937), and late ceramics and sculpture. Materials, conceptual interests, key works, frame readings, and audience reception.