I’ve been in a bit of an art fog since December. I’ve been continuing on with my projects from the last post, cutting matts for ink paintings, adding contrast and finishing touches to those paintings, and sketching portraits. There’s something about the combination of portraits and my abstract works in ink that want to come together…But the idea of it is still indistinct in my mind. It’s not quite the idea of simply faces painted in ink…it’s something else that is just starting to come into focus for me.
These two things, inky abstract landscapes and portraits, are topics that keep coming back to me through the months/years. (I’ll add somewhat surreal floral landscapes as the third returner, although I haven’t managed to get those out of my head and onto canvas in the way I imagine.) It’s important to notice the things that return again and again and I’m beginning to think that this may be the whole key to “finding your style” as an artist.
There’s lots of videos and articles on finding your artistic style but I don’t take them too seriously to be honest. I don’t think that finding your style is necessarily a thing that can be purposely done. Imo it just comes with time and we underestimate how much time it takes. Searching for that style, searching for our selves, is really the whole point isn’t it? The work of a lifetime. Every single painting and sketch is finding your style. Everything you produce— a photo, a blog post, a painting, a pile of tchotchkes on your side table— is you becoming your style.
For me the elements of an artist’s style are:
The artist’s hand: the brushwork, pencil marks, everything about the way the artist physically interacts with and shows up on the canvas or whatever substrate.
The colors: not so much the color palette, although yes that to a degree we all have colors we return to, but more the way an artist uses color and how the choices interact with one another. I think the overall taste of the artist comes through here.
The themes: the ideas that return, the shapes that keep coming through. This to me feels the most subconscious of all the style traits. Most of my Returners, I’m not even sure yet what they mean or why they are important to me. And that’s the purpose of the work I think, to find out why.
I was looking through a book on Egon Schiele I got from the recent Taschen sale. Of course Schiele is enormously famous for his portraits and line work but what really surprised me was how often he painted landscapes. He also had several still lifes and portraits in different styles. So the work he became famous for wasn’t his only work, wasn’t his only style, but it was the most unique. The work of his that was not already out there in the world is what we now use to define him. This sounds so obvious, his unique work is what he is know for but I wonder how much time do we spend busting our ass to bring our own personal style to work that at its core is just not unique? I feel like I need to return to this idea when I am evaluating my own paintings and deciding what to invest the most time in.
Another feeling Schiele’s work cemented for me is that it’s an absolute waste of energy to be stressing or thinking about painting too many different types of things. I have felt this so often and seen sooo many post from other artists about it. This idea that: oh no I don’t have a focus, I like to paint everything, this must mean I have no direction, no style, and that I am not a serious artist After struggling with these thoughts for awhile I now think: Nonsense. I am fully letting this worry go. Your style comes through in all your interests. Why should you make your life more limited and more boring by refusing to let yourself explore all interests and possibilities? Maybe the varied interests are actually the key. If you explore all the things, the ones that really speak to you can not only come forward but can combine. I’m starting to feel for me at least, it’s in these combinations that the really unique work is found.
The older I get the more I realize that most things in life work themselves out with time. It’s when we try to push and rush that issues and wrong turns pop up. What you love to paint most will come to the forefront, for as long as it needs to. What colors you use will grow and change but how you use color and your taste in it, will carry through. And as long as you keep following the whims of inspiration and the topics that bubble up and return from your deepest self, your style will get more and more refined.
So here’s a few pics of what I’ve been up to lately, trying to bring the Returners together. Instead of face portraits I keep being drawn to the torso. It may seem a little weird but there is something about the female torso that is fascinating me. Probably the main factor is it has such flexibility in abstraction. Like you really only need a hint of a shoulder, a waist, and maybe a tiny bit of neck outline but the entire center of the shape is a color free-for-all. I can leave it completely undefined or add hints of other figurative elements. I also feel that it’s less obvious than the face, a little more mysterious to look at?
I’m also drawn to the form because of its connection to old Greek and Roman statues of goddesses. The idea of the eternal female. And I want to explore the shape in different, less traditional, boringly perfect outlines. The torso does have an objectification aspect to it and I’m thinking about what that means and how it relates to us each as individual, unique women. There may also be something deeper and personal in it as all my health struggles are in the torso. I could be subconsciously focused on that area of the body and painting through it. There’s lots to explore and unpack in a simple torso.