Finding a 'Voice'

Today it is a beautiful morning in the mountains and a Happy Valentine's day to all.  It felt like a morning for a colourful blog - recently they have been about limited palette paintings. The one above is a painting that I originally thought I had finished in December, but I actually re-painted much of it last week.  After a while it looked rather insipid. I always hang my work on my studio wall when I think it is finished to guage my own reaction to it. Then it was part of my attempt to pull back on the lush colour I like to use ... but with this one it just didn't feel right.   This is one of two views of the Dorset Coast path (see earlier blog for the original), I may try and restrain myself from tinkering with the other one!

I haven't talked about how important it is to find your own 'voice' as an artist.  That search for a way to present an image that is uniquely one's own. Here in the mountains that was a poser as the temptation is to paint the gradually washed out layers of mountains disappearing into the distance.  After three years I have begun to find some solutions to that as you can see from other blogs.

Interestingly enough I found that painting en 'pleine aire' resulted in my producing a very traditional landscape and as I am not interested in strict photo-realism,  I take the sketch I do outside back to the studio in order to bring my imagination into play.  This is  how I began to find my own particular style, or 'voice'. You can perhaps see what I mean if you look at the more traditional style of painting below that was done completely on location: