Finding your own art style can take time or, you can be lucky and get it immediately, but usually it takes time, effort and intuition.  Following your hunches about a particular question will lead you to your own style.  Let’s look at the four elements of finding your own art style:

Ponder A Big Question

What question are you attempting to answer through your art?  Artists usually work on ideas in batches, and this creates a body of work.  For example, Alysn Midgelow-Marsden, who is a textile artist says that an artist she knows says that it is not having an extra ’something’ that makes him paint, it is ‘the something’ missing which prevents him from stopping.  If you find yourself comparing your art with other artists it maybe that your question isn’t clear enough or big enough to engage you fully.  Stretch yourself.  Ponder big questions. 

Put In The Time

All art needs nurturing to develop, so spending time in your own art practice is important.  The quality of time you spend in your studio at your art table on your computer will vary, so work out which projects you want to work on each week, and let those determine your time rather than sticking rigidly to a schedule.  This will bore the pants off you and diminish your creative impulse.  If you focus on your project’s evolution, you may only need to spend an hour a day to keep it cooking. Let your project drive your schedule and not the other way around.  In the words of the writer Toni Morrisson:  We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations.  I’m not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for that.’  

Make The Effort

Effort is determined by focus and also passion for your subject, so ask yourself if the project rewards your passion.  If it does, you will find it easier to engage in daily effort, and avoid the usual gremlins which distract you, like watching mindless tv.  Sometimes it is simply about showing up, even when you don’t feel particularly creative because I guarantee that you will learn something from being present at your easel, your computer, your drawing table that you can then weave into your art form.  More than anything effort is about showing up consistently, it’s that simple.

Follow Your Hunches

Some of my best work has been created by following my nose, listening to my hunches, and chucking out the rule book. When we listen to our inner voice, we are paying attention to what I call our ‘ancestral strands’, the stories and dances that our soul is calling us to create in our art.  You can’t hear these if you are tuned out and switched off, so find a way to deepen into nature, walk in the park, sit outside on a mooonlit night, hear the dawn chorus, bake some delicious cupcakes … anything which switches on your senses so you are tuned into your ancestral strands.  Great things happen when you do.

If you follow this method you will be on your way to creating your own style of art, whether that is through writing, painting, weaving or sculpting.

Amanda Seyderhelm is an artist, writer and life coach who specialises in enabling people to discover and use their voice to the max through the business of their life.

A Painting Artist