I’ve reached that dreadful stage with my latest picture when I seem to spend far more time looking at it, and trying to decide if it’s finished or not, than I do actually painting. Sitting there, staring at it earlier today, I fell to reflecting that in many respects it is unlike most of the other things I have done. Thinking about this more generally, I realised that it is probably not possible to say that I have a single, recognisable style. This is not only because the way I work has changed over the thirteen years or so during which I have been working as a painter (although that is certainly true).
I work in different media (primarily pastels and acrylic at present) and the technical demands of each lead to quite different results. For example, the marks I make are far more defined when I make them with a brush then when they come from a stick of pastel. The colours are are far more likely to be blended, and I am more willing to allow the characteristics of the support to dictate the kind of surface I end up with.
Then there is the influence of subject-matter. A lot of what I do is landscape, and although I do aim for a rather abstract sense in these cases. On the occasions when I am working on figurative subjects, however, I often seem to end up with a rather simplified approach that could even be called “cartoonish”. (You can check out and see if you agree by looking at different galleries on my website.) I think that if you look at the recent images I did of Upper Nidderdale, dealing with water running over rocks, you might never guess that they were produced by the same person who designed the stained glass windows I finished last month …. or the piece I’m trying to finish, portraying the women who acted as porters during the First World War in Italy.
Students in art school seem to be urged to work towards a style which they make their own. Does it matter if you don’t have one? I don’t actually think that a diversity of styles makes your work less authentic, which is what really matters. I do wonder, however, if the pressure to develop a uniform style comes from the desire to ensure that work is more readily marketable.