How do you know when an artwork is finished? Good question, but one without a one-size-fits-all answer.
For figurative painters or landscape painters, I imagine it is made a little easier as the image you paint will look like the person or landscape you've chosen as your subject.
For abstract artists, it is a little more, well....abstract. For me, it is a feeling, which sounds a little "woo", but it tends to be a feeling of calmness or quietness that isn't happening during the creative phase. That feeling comes from noticing that the colours are blending nicely together, the textures are showing off, and there aren't any sharp lines or strange shapes being created. (Unless that was my intention).
Sometimes, a painting can bring on that feeling at first, but if I set it aside to work on something else, I can easily come back to it later and it is now not calm at all.
I use a few techniques to test out the "finished-ness" of a painting. Sometimes I will hang the painting on the wall, stand back and look at it, and see if it brings on those feelings of calm and quietness. Sometimes I will turn the painting a different direction and see what it looks like. (This is a definite advantage of painting abstractly, as you couldn't really spin a landscape upside down and make it work). Sometimes I take a photo of it, and inspect it on my computer to see if it makes sense. Sometimes I keep adding paint, which might work or might take the painting back to square one.
Only when I realize that I'd be happy to hang it on my own wall, then I know it is Finished and can prepare it for its debut.
(Definitely Finished)
© 2021 Kimberli Werner, “Enough “, encaustic wax, marble dust, acrylic, on wood panel, 20.3cm x 20.3cm (8” x 8”).