All my life I’ve been fascinated by listening to the different ways pianists play Beethovan’s Moonlight Sonata. Even more fascinating is that when you familiarize yourself with master pianists, it’s easy to recognize their playing without being told who the performer is. The same is true for artists: when an artist evolves into a practice of creating without calculating, their work is recognizable from across the room.
So, how is this possible?
Style is not something we invent. It is our natural “handwriting.” It is the result of being in command of our skills to the point that we no longer have to think about the “how to” and delve straight into responding to what we see, interpreting it in a way that pleases us. To try to force that to fit into a trend, or to model it after how another artist might do it, is to truncate our own artist’s voice in favor of imitating a style.
IT’S ALL ABOUT BEING NATURAL
Below the word “artist” is written by seven different people.
The same word communicates seven unique expressions. Each style is derived from thousands of repetitive strokes over the course of one’s lifetime, writing without thinking about how it’s being done.
That is how a painter’s style evolves. It happens without the artist thinking about it. Otherwise, it is contrived and no true artist wants that!