How did I find my style? From my experience I don’t know of any shortcuts – it’s in doing the TIME that you begin to see patterns emerging, maybe a particular focus, a specific grouping of colours or you find styles of painting that play to your strengths.
I think a lot of aspiring artists feel like they have to wait around, until suddenly one day they will be inspired and know their style and start painting. It doesn’t work that way. I think that using the word ‘finding’ your style is kind of a strange idea, as if it’s somehow this magical, almost slightly out of reach thing. Instead it’s a revealing or unfurling of what already lies within you. You already have a style – you paint the way only you can paint - it’s just a matter of doing the work to reveal it.
Over time you will begin to drill down on aspects that start to appear and then reappear in your work. In terms of my shapes, most have been completely accidental with some becoming a regular feature in future artwork.
Experiment, experiment, experiment as many of my happy accidents have taken me to new places. I don’t like the idea of one particular style, I feel like it’s always evolving and in fact many artists manage to offer a number of ‘series’ that are different in style – but still un-mistakenly them.
When I started painting years ago, I was completely rubbish – I might have thought I was all kinds of amazingness….but no I was not. Truth is we all have to start at the beginning - it’s only in the practising that we get better. I don’t even want to begin to tell you how many artworks were gifted to people in the early days, canvases that had 9 lives or more with do-overs and paint-overs to a point where the canvas couldn’t take any more paint. I even put canvases out on the street for free, as they were piling up at my house – on every wall and under every bed. It’s frustrating when you’re at that stage – not wanting to spend a small fortune on canvases and paints, but needing to paint to discover what’s you – it’s just a tricky stage.
So for those of you still trying to figure it all out – I would say spend less time focusing on trying to get a style – and just paint and it will happen naturally over time. Take the focus off finding your style and just focus on your craft. I can’t even begin to explain how I am painting the way I am painting right now – it’s just been a natural progression over time, from one artwork to the next. If you can be bothered scrolling back through my feed, you will see how I have simply evolved to get to where I am now. You just need to make a start, then you will pivot slightly and then it’s just a building on and progression from there over time.
At some point you will paint something that’s good, someone will want to buy it and you’ll be like, huh – I’ll paint another like that, and then another. Soon enough you’ll catch on to something and you’ll be on your way.
Love to know how you have developed your style?
