Artist Habits and Themes

So about thirty seconds ago, I was reading Art and Fear when I came upon the section about habit for an artists. And after I finished reading it, I felt as if this was something that I wanted to speak about immediately.

In the field of art, many things are insecure. You never know when ideas will come, you never know exactly what you're working towards, until these things happen. There are two things you can rely upon. One is mastery of technical skill. This helps you create art that is pleasing to others, and encourages you to work harder when all motivation is gone except for that of "I want to have the ability to do this task."

But there is another kind of safety that art gives you. This is the safety of style.

Often, I hear about "realizing yourself as an artist" and I thought, what does this mean? Isn't the idea of art that it is ever changing, and you should never fall into habit?

Now, getting into a habit of habit is not healthy for an artist. If you do the same thing over and over again because you know you're good at it, then you're not accomplishing much on the long run. Think about bands who release their sophomore album, proving inferior to the first. Technically, the music is better written, but it doesn't have the freshness and sincerity of their premiere album. Simply put: something is missing.

But all artists have an underlying theme within their work. When you hear the first few notes of a Beatles song, you know it's a Beatles song. It's easy to point out a Klimt once you've seen past works. Heck, I found one while dashing through halls in the Met to reach the Musical Instruments exhibit. It caught my eye immediately.

We are all unique individuals. As unique individuals, we complete tasks differently, even if they are assigned the same way. If you ask a class to draw a picture of a person, let's say, Abraham Lincoln, each drawing will look slightly different. In fact, not only will each drawing not look entirely like Abraham Lincoln, but each will look a lot like the artist who drew it.

Every artist has a niche; a theme/tendency that they put into their art that makes it different from other art.

This niche is not easy to find. First, an artist begins by replicating the work of others that they admire. Within their inspired works, you can see glimpses of the individual. As they develop more experience overtime, their style becomes prominent, identifiable, and maybe even relatable and admirable.