How do you find your style?
Finding your style is an elusive topic, and one that inevitably comes up in my classes. Students often ask as a variation of the question, “does your style find you or do you find the style based on what you do best?”
We must first learn and master the technique of our chosen medium. It’s difficult to define your style when you are in the learning process, however, it’s important to pay attention what techniques we resonate with and enjoy. Encaustics can help create a mood or a feeling, but the photo encaustic process is not unique and is not style in and of itself.
Instead it’s content that sets an artist apart and determines his or her style—it’s what we have to say and how we choose to say it.
I often tell my students when first choosing an image to think about what part of the image they want to conceal and what they want to reveal. On its simplest level this is about the image, but taken one step further and it’s really about concealing and revealing ourselves as we work.
My sub-conscious is always at work in my image taking, selection process, and way I work the images. Art making allows me to continually learn more about my surroundings and myself. One of my students once posted in the classroom, “Spending time with my own photos gives me clues about what is going on inside.”
Photography allows me to connect to things, places, moments, and people. But the image is only the beginning. It’s the hands on manipulation that lets me further connect to myself and allows the me to speak through the work.
After time the process becomes intuitive. I’ve learned to identify what ideas are important to me and through content choices I begin to find the aspects that make my work unique. Looking deeply to see the relationship that I have to the subject and why it’s important for me to envision and create a piece of art from the image. It’s then my connection and expression that brings others to experience and feel their own connection, whatever that may be—and this is what ultimately defines my ‘style’.
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Would love to hear from you about your process for discovering your unique style. Leave a comment below.
Be well….be creative,
Very thoughtful, Clare. I am also a very intuitive kind of artist so I appreciate your process. Right now I’m in the middle of painting backgrounds and have had to redo one piece five times but somehow in all this I’m getting closer to finding my own style. The process is the thing and the process is wonderful.
Thanks
Hi Carol, yes, I’m constantly re-doing pieces. It’s just part of my process. Glad you are enjoying the process…..otherwise it might just be too frustrating:)
As I am new to the photo encaustic medium, I’m certainly spending a lot of time “playing” with it, in order to learn what works, what doesn’t, what’s fun, what’s not fun, what exciting things I discover, what frustrating things I struggle with. But I also think that all of this “playing” also leads me to my unique style. For me, it doesn’t work to think too hard about things like style, or I end up scaring my creativity away. Approaching all of the art work and creative projects that I am engaged in with a huge dose of “play” helps my style – my artistic voice – find its way into the work.
Hi Deb, I’m so glad that you are still playing with the medium…..and you are right, the more you play the more you find what speaks to you…..what images work well for your vision, and what do not…..eventually your unique style begins to emerge.