Digital Collage: Angering The Opponent (version 1) / the style trap in art / New York Art Quartet

'Their work is immediately identifiable' - read: 'They're trapped'

Was it Picasso or Beryl Cook who said "I have no style"? Pop quiz for you. 

Whilst making a coffee this afternoon, thoughts of style sprang to mind. No, not the style of coffee-maker we have, but the type an artist exhibits. This was an echo of a conversation I had earlier in the week, with whom I cannot recall because the internet has destroyed my....um...memory, that's it, my memory. 

Artists develop a style and stick with it because it's successful. I should be so lucky as to be faced with that decision. By nature, us 'unknowns' will never be told by a gallery-owner/agent/dealer to "Do more of those, they sell!". It's therefore easy for me to criticise those trapped by their own success. I only do so in the naive belief that artists are inquisitive and eager to explore new possibilities. You may have noticed that my work varies considerably. I've even done some painting, but it was so bad unsatisfactory on the whole that it remains hidden.

It's best not to show work that you're not happy with, isn't it? Then again, to do so proves to the world that you're not the ama-zing art machine they might think you are. I have no illusions in that department, though. That said, I totally believe in the works I show. The good thing about the internet is that you can always delete what you later decide isn't so good, hoping that nobody has already spread it around. I've never done that, by the way, not because I think it's all aged well, but rather, I don't look back very often.

The problem with an artist having A Style, for me, is that it becomes tiresome; seen one, more-or-less seen them all. Jazz, Charles Mingus said, is the sound of surprise; the same should be hoped for in art. Not that I expect an artist to constantly change what they do, but at least vary their vision a little? I suppose, having several (?) modes of expression in a way that is natural to me, that's easy to say. Others are obsessive about one style, perhaps because it reflects something of their character. 

Anyway, talking of Jazz and artistic 'freedom', here's the New York Art Quartet, 'painting' in sound...