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Weekly Question No. 19 - On Finding Our Own Voice.
Ok, so we’ve watched all the DMP videos and put all of Mark's instruction into practice. We’ve done several dozen paintings – still lifes, portraits and a few landscapes. We have become proficient realist painters. With all that now under our belt, we want to find owe own voice, our own style. As wonderful as Mark's paintings are, we don't want ours to be mistaken for his. We want the style of our work to be unique, original and recognizable. But what is style? What is it that makes a painter’s work unique and recognizable? And how do we find our own voice, our own style?
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Your own voice or style is whatever is authentically your vision, and your means of attaining that vision. When you paint what you want to paint, how you want to paint it, and when that painting looks the way you want it to look you have reached your own authentic style. this of course in and of itself may take much practice, experimentation, and many years.
That style, might not be unique, or recognizable, or it might be.... but if you purposefully choke or suppress or artificially adjust your own artistic instincts or that creative person in you, in reaction to this or that in the market or work from other painters, or any other outside consideration.... you might, as a result, be more unique and/or recognizable, but IMHO you will have stifled if not killed your own authentic artistic voice.
To find your voice you need only sing!
Useful article in the link above. Generally, the author says we don’t need to find a voice, just develop what we already have.
My contrarian view is:
A voice may be a boring rut that smothers exploration of ideas, materials and techniques.
A voice may be an expression of the “least effort” principle.
Your mum may be the only person in the world that likes that painting voice.
A voice is really just the over exploitation of a brush technique - stippling, impasto etc.
The more real a representative painting, the less voice it has/needs.
Denis
It’s by our commitment to “our voice” being heard or understood that could make us recognizable.
But there has to be that other person who relates or enjoys your art and see’s it’s value, which it could happen tomorrow or 100 years from now.. who knows.
That was an interesting article, Denis. The writer says that our voice is there all the time. We don't have to create one, we just have to find our own.
Yes, @joydeschenes, it's one thing to find our own style/voice but whether others like/understand it is another matter.
Well I have not done all of the things you mention in your first sentence, but I have learned a lot from Mark.
I am unsure if I have yet found my style or if I am yet to stumble upon it. I guess I find it hard to be objective about it.
I have tended to enjoy doing fairly detailed work, but have also enjoyed doing work a little looser.
I think your work Rob is a a fine example of an artist with a definite style in that your work can be recognised as having been done by you.
Im not sure I could say the same of my own, yet.
Guess I am still searching.
I see the beginnings of a style in your work, Michael. You emphasize simplicity and focus in on what's important without getting bogged down in detail. You recent painting of the dish rack is a good example. And most recently the simple bowl with the highlight in its interior. This emphasis on simplicity gives nobility and presence to the everyday items in your work.
I think it takes time and a lot of painting to really get a feel for the direction we want to go in and how we want our work to look. There are a lot of facets to 'style'. I think it has to do with subject matter, with brushwork, the sort of palette we develop... It's the unique combination of these things that makes a painters work recognizable. I mean, look at VVG. Who would not recognize his brushwork, texture and colour? Or go back to Vermeer. His interiors with figures are unmistakable. No doubt it happens quicker for some than others but I think if we keep at it a style emerges.
I admit that there is a part of me that feels because I am still growing as an artist, and always will be, I still feel that I am searching and exploring. Part of me feels that If I were to recognise a style of my own that I have come to then I would then be bound to stay on that track. This I fear may stifle the liberating feelings and mindset that I get from creating paintings.
I know I would not necessarily have to stick to a style that I had evolved, but I also know its importance.
I guess a part of my feels it would be stifling if I got recognised for doing things a certain way, as I would then be expected to produce that.
I also have a tendency to over think.
As for personal style, voice, technique,; I doubt anyone could look at the variety of things I have puddled with over the years and be able to say they were created by me. I would be some future art historians nightmare if I were good enough for some future art historian to be looking at my work. As it is, I am realistic enough to know most of my works will be either gifted to charity shops over the next 50 years, or thrown away once the people who know me are dead and buried. Until that day, my works are signed so if presented with them in my lifetime, I could recognise them!
As I said to someone yesterday, I have done 5 small paintings in the last few days and some look like an amateur works and some look quite good. It is like 2 different people painted them. Blessed if I know how to develop a style; perhaps it how you hold your tongue as you paint.....?
Like you, and I suspect a lot of others, I didn't paint every painting or watch every DMP instruction video. I zeroed in on things that might help with what I was trying to paint at the moment. But I have watched most of them and I have tried to learn Mark's technique.
I don't think style is something we ought to worry about when we're still at the stage of acquiring basic skills. Maybe we'd start to think about it when we are painting regularly, producing a good amount of work and are trying to carve out a niche and market for ourselves. But even then, I can't help feeling that it has to happen organically as we become more experienced and have figured out what really interests us. I don't think we just wake up one day and decide on a style.
So my point is not so much about a dichotomy between rational versus emotional, purposeful action versus instinct or intuition, it was about what it means to have an authentic voice from inside versus all the other voices out there.
Who are you? What do you want? What’s your voice? contra. Who someone else is, what they want, what their voice is. This isn’t about what they or you actually paint but what you authentically want to paint. Being reactionary is just as inauthentic whether we follow the crowd like sheeple or whether we dutifully and unthinkingly go against the crowd, like a rebel without a cause.
I’m not saying it’s easy to find what is authentically YOU, but I am proposing that it is crucial to an authentic voice in art.
I agree… but I think that only appears to work over the short term. The negative effects on the artist spirit, motivation, development probably outweigh the short term gains. I cannot think of a better way to make an artist hate art, stagnate in skills and quit early than chasing dollars and pandering to clients at the expense of their craft.
@CBG, thanks for clarifying that. I agree we want to be authentic, true to our own aesthetic and not be pushed and pulled this way and that by fashions, trends, popularity etc. But perhaps authenticity and style are two different issues. In life in general, and not just in art, we want to be authentic and true to our own ideals. But, to my mind, style in art is a different, more specific issue than being true to our own aesthetic. It's the way our work looks. What I wanted to discuss was what style actually is. What are its elements? What is it that makes one painter's painting of a bunch of flowers or a landscape distinguishable from another's even though they paint the same subject? What would you say are the elements of style in art?
I know it's difficult to discuss an issue like this in the abstract so maybe I should try to find works by two well known artists with distinct styles and ask folks to talk about their individual styles. I don't know how long it will take me to do that so in the meantime I'd be very interested to read what you, @CBG and others, think the elements of style are.
If we were discussing the elements of style what would you say distinguishes the styles of these two painters?
I suspect a concept like style is more important to an art critic/academic than a creative artist. Given the paucity of my output, I fall into a category closer to the former than the latter, so I will share some thoughts.
Style might be a way people can categorize art and/or recognize an artist. I think this is mostly a construct of convenience, at least when dealing with truly independent minded artists who simply paint what they want and how they want to. So us as viewers, grasp at distinguishing features which lend themselves to groupings, and are helpful in identification (assuming some artists "choose" to paint similar things or in similar ways, either to each other or personally across a body of work) of works into grouping. Due to the purpose of the concept, "style" I would say it is defined by anything one can point at (but perhaps not subject matter, which I believe is conceptually independent of style).
So use of color, saturation, form, brush work, optical blending, glazing, splashes, gimmicks, you name it, all probably can be used as elements of what defines a style. For categories of artists works, collectives, movements, some subset of these would be identified as particularly relevant to defining the "style". Those elements where the group, consistency differs from other groups, but remains the same in the group would suit to define it, while those elements which are just as varied and/or uncommon to each work in the group as well as works outside the group would not be useful in defining the style of the group. Similarly for the body of work of a single artist or particular periods of the artist, assuming the artist had a single style during a life oir in each period.
In your example, the subject matter is an imaginative (not from a reference) rendition of a night scene. We could analyse what each artist has done here, in each single painting but nothing here is indicative of a style without reference to other works IMHO. An artist has chosen to paint realistically, the other something more abstract, one artist has chosen to use more saturated colors, and particular kinds of brush strokes, the other has not. In essence anything beyond general subject matter could be indicative of style, but until there are commonalities amongst a group of pieces by one or more painters, we simply have unique paintings.
Anything and everything about how a painting looks and how it was created(to the extent it remains visible) can go into "fabricating"/defining any particular "Style" and attributing it or associating it with any one artist or group of artists, or group of works, but style is not dependent upon content or subject matter. IMHO
I think of style and voice as two different things. I see style in terms of techniques that are learned and voice that is more like a personal tone, like what you say and how you say it.
I think style can be learned. I recently looked at a Rembrandt and a painting by one of his students. They both had the Rembrandt style but the way they spoke were different.
Your point about learning and practice vs saying something serious is interesting. Do we ever stop learning and practicing? Do we wake up one day as fully fledged authentic artists with our own distinctive style?
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
Not a one size fits all answer may be closer to the way it works.
Thanks, @toujours. Yes, we see that stifling of originality quite often. The Australian tonalist followers of Max Meldrum, for example, all ended up painting more like Meldrum than Meldrum and none of them, apart from perhaps Clarice Beckett, made good. There's some point at which we have to say, well, ok, I've done the lessons, acquired the skills, and then ask, now what do I want to say with them? How will I use them to say something original and authentic?
Never get kidney stones! I've been too ill to be much use here on the forum this last week. I even missed posting the Weekly Question. I expect to feel like crap for another 10 days or so until I get the ureteral stent removed. But I will get better. I've still been painting when the pain eases a little in order to relieve the boredom of laying around all day. Keeps me sane.
I hope you are feeling better soon Rob, leave no stone unturned to do so.
It will pass.
Sorry those are not the phrases you want to hear after what you have been through
But seriously Get well soon.
I have started a painting of some granite rocks in Stanthorpe Qld. Have wiped off the canvas 3 times so far, but think I have it sorted now. Wishing for some of your skill and technique at this point in time!
I have done exactly a dozen paintings since learning the DMP method. I think I'm still in the 'follow the DMP method as best you can' stage. I want to get so much better in my realism. Some of these dozen paintings I have let myself go and painted freely and undisciplined. That was fun in a way but the results were worse, mostly.
My hope is to get better at disciplined, DMP realism so that I can better have a voice to express. I may want to do something in my head, but if my understanding of values and colors are poor than my voice will be poor.
Hopefully that makes sense. I have a ways to go in realism before I can have an effective style.
(edited to say that I am praying for you, @tassieguy. how mobile are you right now?)
I think a personal style is not something we should worry about, especially not early on when we are just starting out. I think it's something that happens gradually and organically over time without much conscious awareness. It's not like there are a heap of styles to choose from and one day we just decide on one. I think we just have to let our style emerge.
Thanks also for your thoughts on my tedious health problems. I'm somewhat mobile. I was allowed to leave the hospital on the understanding that I would treat home as hospital. Nothing strenuous. But I'm not the type to lay about. I'm still able to stand at the easel and paint when the pain is not too bad.