Style

“I want to find my own style” is a comment I often hear from artists.  I had a student ask me the other day, how I developed my “style”. Of course, that got me to thinking about the whole concept.  I told her that “style” just comes about in a natural way; eventually you synthesize all the different approaches you have experimented with.  You filter through all the information you have absorbed and hold on to the parts that feel authentically “you”.

I have since thought of a pretty good analogy. We all remember learning to write in cursive. Some of us even remember learning the “Palmer Method”. How many of us have handwriting that really resembles that anymore? For a while, if you were anything like me, you experimented with what you wanted your handwriting to “look” like. I tried writing with no slant, with a backward slant, lots of loops, no loops. I had a name that ended in “y” which provided endless variations. But somewhere along the way, I settled into my “style” of writing. It wasn’t some intentional occurrence, it just happened. Handwriting experts claim they can tell a lot about someone by the way they write, and everyone’s style is unique. Painting is just another form of mark making, once you have achieved a certain level of confidence and ability, style will just happen all on it’s own.

Just paint, paint a lot.