Are you Uninhibited or Style Conscious?

"Prayer Circles" Acrylic on 24 x 18 canvas

We always wonder if our personal artwork presents a style that is unique and recognizable by others. The answer is yes. Even though your style may be imperfect and perhaps full of “beginner’s” mistakes or careless errors, your style is evident in almost every painting.

Art Biz Coach, Alyson Stanfield, describes it this way: “Style is a characteristic or group of characteristics that we can identify as constant, recurring, coherent, etc. that is identified with an individual.”

And from the late Robert Genn: “Each artist’s uniqueness and individualism brings endless variations. The dynamism invites the “keeping-in-mind-God” to play a part in the work’s evolution, enriching the process. The job becomes an intellectual as well as a technical and emotional exercise. The idea is to stretch your brain so your act of art is your very own.

There are also designated types of art that differentiate themselves, one from another. For instance, impressionism, realism, surrealism, expressionism, painterly, folksy, primitive, abstraction, etc. Most of us learned about these different genres in school. But within each category, there are definitive components such as the compositional elements, the brush strokes; are they flamboyant and wide, or detailed and soft?

"#hopeful in India" Acrylic, 24 x 18 canvas

And what about color? The hues and values chosen and the way they have been applied are all recognizable; even the lines and shapes and how they’re rendered are unique to each artist. Your style is a combination of the mediums, techniques, and subject matter you choose. It’s the extra things you do to distinguish your work from other artists.

As you gain experience, your work evolves. Your colors become more sophisticated. The composition more interesting and leading. Increased subtleties and innuendo begin to tone down the brasher elements and enhance the message. The painting becomes a soft-spoken message from your heart that is both appealing and convincing.

You the artist become an expert at playful seduction and illusion. There are often multiple messages that beckon and coalesce into one cohesive center of interest. You begin to sense where and when intensity is needed to mirror your own passion. You triumph when this melding of heart and soul on canvas are transfixed in the viewer’s mind long after they have left the scene.

Some may be riveted in place, studying the twists and turns of your color and vision. This may not happen overnight. This evolution of style is like giving birth. The process may be long and hard, but you know it will eventually happen. The struggle to overcome and to achieve has been done before by all those who profess to be artists.

"Fish Market" Acrylic on 24 x 18 canvas

Is it worth the intensity of emotion and the grief of failure? Is climbing to the top of Mount Everest ever worth the risks? Only those who reach the top may feel exultation. The building blocks you leave behind (those crass unfinished canvases, those embarrassing compositions and tacky mistakes) litter the highways and byways of your history and become the building blocks of your destiny. It is not over until you lay down the brush and either give up or give in to the overwhelming hold artistry has on you.

Virtual Reality can’t Touch us or Taint us. Or can it?

"A Joyful Heart" 9 x 12 pastel on Bristol

Public Broadcasting recently aired a delightful British Comedy called “Last Tango in Halifax.” I enjoyed the feature immensely. The story revolved around an older couple who met, fell in love, and planned to be married. The catch? They each had their own complex past, their own children and spouses and grandchildren each with their own unique problems, quirks, differences, and weaknesses.

What impressed me at stories' end was that Halifax was a lonely and harsh environment that isolated people from each other. The characters, in spite of all their flaws, were lovable, sometimes desperate, and always unpredictable yet supportive of each other, at least in the beginning.

I wept along with the characters. I felt their pain and their weakness as they bungled their lives simply by being human. As a person of faith, I couldn’t help wondering if the absence of faith was a character flaw and the reason for their downfall. They struggled against life without any spiritual structure or foundation to guide them or hold them together.

"Tansy's Pride" 9 x 12 pastel on Bristol

And yet they survived. In the end, they even triumphed as they overcame their shallow self absorbed inclinations to reach out and embrace those they loved. Rising above their petty and sometimes jarring differences, they brought their bouquets of forgiveness to the simple table that life had dealt them.

What matters most in life usually triumphs, if we let it. We can rise above the cheap and tawdry leavings of this clumsy imperfect existence and replace our shallowness with humility, hard fought forgiveness, and hope.

People in the end are worth the effort. There is dignity and hidden gold even in the worst of us, and surely in the best of us. Pure evil does exist, but at what point is the soul condemned or the door closed? The eleventh hour? The twelfth?

"Broken" 11 x 14 mixed media SOLD

What binds us is our humanity; our need for love and companionship. This alone is the Godly part of our nature and must be nurtured and acted upon if humanity is to survive. Without it, we will incinerate ourselves in a global frenzy.

Keep the candle burning, friends. If the light of love and goodness goes out, our world will be very dark, indeed.

"With these Hands -- Hope"  16 x 20 mixed media on canvas

We are Fighters, and the Battles we Fight are Real

"With These Hands -- Hope" 16x20 mixed media canvas

Every day we fight fatigue, interruptions, resistance, competition, and our own ineptness. If you think I’m joking, I’m not.

Sometimes we hit a stone wall so strong and so deep that we can’t get past it. We bang our heads on it for awhile and then give up. Maybe we try again tomorrow. If we keep batting our heads or our fists against an obstacle, maybe it will go away. Usually it doesn’t. If you’ve reached this point in your life, don’t give up just yet. There may be “light at the end of the tunnel.”

What are the possibilities?

1. You could climb over the wall.  Earthly walls, like most obstacles are rarely sky high. Most of them are created in our own minds or by outside forces we feel we have no control over.
2. You could go around the wall. It may cost you extra time, and perhaps more education, but your efforts will pay off if it helps you reach your goal.
3. Knowing that the wall represents the circumstances of your life that prevent you from being productive means you must find a way to remove it, go around it, or look at it as another challenge that must be overcome.

The last thing you want to do is allow the wall to stop you from doing what you want to do in your heart of hearts.

"Broken" 11x14 mixed media canvas SOLD

I’m not usually a gambler, but there was one time in my life when I sat in Reno, Nevada, and poured nickels down the throat of a slot machine. I was determined I was going to win. I was afraid if I left someone else would take over my machine and reap what I’d delivered.

I went through $35 that evening with nothing to show for it. 

Some machines are rigged to pay up, and some are not. My inability to move, to get past that wall froze (brain freeze) my common sense. A move to another machine, a change in thinking or attitude could have helped me get past this slump.

I’m not telling this story to encourage others to gamble. I’m just saying that sometimes in life we hit obstacles. Instead of finding ways around them by weighing our options, and asking ourselves: “what’s the worst that can happen?” We let fear freeze us into a position of banging our heads against problems rather than trying to solve them.

"Leap of Faith" 16x20 mixed media canvas

If there’s a nagging problem or wall in your life, find another way around it or you’ll end up sitting in the same place stalled; frozen by inaction in much the same way as I was frozen into a losing position in Reno. Sometimes we just have to get off our “duffs” and move! We have to climb out of a rut, jump over a hurdle and move into the light of common sense and self-discovery.

Featured Artist
Today I’m featuring Krzysztof Tozowski from Warsaw, Poland. Her surreal paintings and photographs are humorous, colorful and lively. See Link for Krzysztof’s facebook page below.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/lozowskio