Hunting for An Artistic Voice

Writing about art has become one of my most rewarding endeavours, but long before I ever started to think seriously about the history of art, I was a painter. What kind of painter, I find it hard to say. Blessed with the proclivity for artistic indecision, my archive — to give it a grandiose title — is inconveniently varied. For all the years I’ve been making paintings, I’ve found myself pulled between different mediums and subject matters with a kind of irresistible magnetism. Commercially, I don’t think it helps. To sell art, it’s undoubtedly beneficial to have a style, or to put it more prosaically, a brand. It’s useful in order for people to recognise your work at a glance, and if they purchase a piece of it, to know that what they have is representative of a slice of a bigger pie. Yet when you work across so many different styles as I do, the consistency that branding requires never quite materialises. Unrestrained by genre or medium, I’ve painted portraits and self-portraits, landscapes, abstract paintings, realistic, impressionistic, hard-edged, soft-edged, monotone and multicoloured works. I’ve dabbled across all of these in both oil paints and watercolours. I say this not to boast but to reflect on the question: does it matter? <a href="https://christopherpjones.medium.com/hunting-for-an-artistic-voice-c40978927049">Read More</a>