Musings: On Artistic “Style”
In art—consistency is your gimmick. It’s simultaneously the thing that unifies everything that you create and the thing that inhibits you most from exploring your creativity because people start buying your brand—not your art. Leave yourself the freedom to create what drives you and stop searching for a “style” that defines you.
Paint that which appeals to you most fully. Don’t try to paint what appeals to some one else. If you like it, then do it; and do it in the most direct way you can find; only do it so as to fully and completely convey just what it is that you like, unaffected by anything else. And because you have seen or felt for yourself in your own way, and expressed that; and because you are not another, nor like any other that ever was, what you have done will not be like anything else that ever was—and that is originality. But never imitate yourself, either. Be open. Be ready to receive impressions and emotions. And if you have done one thing well, accept that in itself as a reason for not doing it again. There are always plenty of things—ideas, impressions, conceptions, appreciations—waiting to be painted; if you try one twice, you fail once for freshness, and loose a chance for doing a new thing.
—How to oil paint by legendary DANIEL BURLEIGH PARKHURST, 15 chapters on oil painting by DANIEL BURLEIGH PARKHURST
