Why do I have to have a "Style"?

I had one of those wake-up moments this week and realized I've been fixated on pinning down my "style" for the last few years - ever since I opened my studio. There's this idea floating out there that an artist, to be commercially sucessful, must have a recognizable style.

Picasso not withstanding, this is probably true.

But as somebody who has played with "styles" practically my whole life, it seems a little confining. And lately, kind of suffocating.

I've been reading John Carlson's masterpiece book (Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting), and I found a passage about style that made sense to me.

"The style in painting, as in writing, is spontaneously developed. You can use "thick" paint or "thin" paint; you can "stain" your canvas according to your personal feeling about it. It is what you are going to "say" on the canvas that is all important, not how you are going to put on the paint or handle the thing."

When I read this I felt a great weight come off of me. I looked around at my bright, ultra detailed watercolors, my monochromatic, soft-edged landscapes. And they all look like me.

I guess somebody will have to sort out my "style" later : )

Painting Wildflowers

Last year back in September I decided I was going to record Georgia native wildflowers in a series of paintings. This sounded like a nice relaxing project that would take me outside with my sketchbook. I think I was picturing a leisurely pace of drawing, alternating with taking a few snapshots up close.

I kind of forgot how fast spring unrolls. When April arrived, it seemed like there were new wildflowers erupting everywhere, every day, and I felt like I was racing just to document them before they subsided into the forest floor for another year. The pages of my sketchbook were filling up (along with the memory chip on my camera).

Now that the spring rush is slowing, I'm in my studio part of each day, sketches and photos spread out on my work table and pinned on my bulletin board. It's hard to know where to start.

But i have this sort of anticipatory glow thinking about the paintings I'm going to do - like waiting for Christmas to come.

Field of Memory

When we were kids it was acceptable for a ten year old to wander outside. We were encumbered with neither chaperone nor schedule. One such morning thirty years ago I found myself following a dirt road in the woods. As the road turned a corner, it came out of the trees, and I suddenly stood before the most beautiful field I had ever seen.

It was a vast expanse of clover, rippling green and all in bloom. Dozens of little yellow butterflies danced and hovered over the purple blossoms. To my child eyes it seemed like a magic place, a place outside the Earth I knew.

The memory returned to me last month along a rural road. As I looked beyond the field to a wide blue sky, I felt a return to that childnood delight. It's a bittersweet, piercing happiness we all recognize - a yearning for the Eternal that seems to lie just beyond our reach.