The art of painting…

The art of painting is a performance-based endeavor.  In this performance, recorded by the applications of age-defying pigments, is to be found the fragments and remnants of the “you” who will not always remain you.  The poignancy and sadness of distance and loss, the vigor of mortality, have always been the object and subject of all art, of which painting, in surpassing ceramics and sculpture, has ascended to primacy.  That in painting one can find the person long dead in a century-old brushstroke, in a momentary choice, is tantamount to painting’s rejection of death as eraser and annihilator of memory, of love, of self.
Nothing else records quite like painting.  The tremor of an ancient hand, the forceful thrust by a vigorous youth are more telling of personality than the biographical eulogies that describe the incidental habits of “x”, or the wine choices of “y”.  It is in the realization that the uniqueness of a person can be found in the painting itself; the painting lets one into the world of art itself, it is a refuge where something is left, as Picasso used to say “just so”, encapsulating a moment in time, so that wherever that painting stands, the painter also stood, head cocked, brush slowly dropping away.

I am evoking a rather romantic scenario to provide one (the reader?) with the ultimate goal of the artist: to fight linear time.  It is on these terms that Michelangelo, Goya, Velázquez, Ribera, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and many more found delight in themselves and recorded this discovery and delight in painting.
I am also alluding to another aspect of true art; the unique flavor of the never-to-happen-again artist.  All of the idiosyncrasies, the problems, the failures, the mistakes that a young painter will encounter will be his enemy unless he realizes that it is his savior.  In your “mistakes” you will find your style, and in your style you will find yourself in art.  Style itself is the observable pattern of your particular habits, of mark making, of subject choice, of tool usage, and as such are uniquely yours.  Homogenizing elements such as computer programs, market studies, and other such design-backward scenarios disrupt natural creative inclinations.  These inclinations are known by children, but are forgotten by adults.  Possibilities are the outcomes of unruly imaginations, and it is on this level that painting should be approached, if not for the direct benefit of the painting at hand, then for the direct benefit of the future painter.

Shape, in relation to style…

SHAPE IN RELATION TO STYLE:
    The language of gestural expression is related to two overlapping aspects of composition within the 2D format.  The first is a macro consideration; the shapes as major movements in a composition.  This is constructing shapes to influence environment: how do they behave?  Do they force you out, loom above you, hide from you?  Are they gentle, violent or inert?  The dynamism or stability present in a painting (or sculpture) is due to this consideration.  A way of manipulating shapes may define style, even driving through the academic taxonomic barriers between subjects and eras, as the whole history of pictures is a catalog of attempts to use shape to enhance content.

As the shapes in a composition can define style, so does the manner in which a substance is applied.  So often the micro movements between shapes becomes a treasury of exposition, so often these boundaries become for us the distinctive feature of an object.  In this zone of transition is found the nature of the subject.  Is it dense?  Is it fleeting, cloudlike?  Is it chalky and bricklike?  So many times I have wished that I could sense that the artist was aware that flesh could feel like leather, or satin, or paint.  The conveyances of these sensations are driven by the modulation of your hand, carrying anything that can soak or smear.  The only true variable is the hand of the wielder, and because of this is the most important link to personal style.  Your hand can’t lie.  It can cover its tracks, but its desire to do so will be discovered.  It is, in its fullest capacity, a fingerprint and a diary.  Those with nothing to say and no means to say it resort increasingly to the blueprints of ideas and “isms”, the sand traps of illuminative thought. 
    (Note: the mistake and the fallacy in minimalism is in thinking that the real message complexifies as the object and manner simplify, this is the realm of physicists and business models.)
    The only remedy is to act, to react to your actions and modify your own manner.  It could be spoken of as the cycles of work throughout a period of time crystallizing into a vision; it is self-recognition enforcing identity.  Your manner is the matter.  Remember: “expression is tied to behavior, not to things” (Arnheim).

On Gesture

mouse over the image for a link to Robischon Gallery

Retreating to a local level and its more pragmatic consideration comes the preface of style: gesture. Gesture is not a spastic, uncontrolled movement of the hand, nor is it a component of “looseness”. Gesture is a physical manner in which beings communicate. Creatures with no sophisticated spoken (verbal) communication rely almost exclusively on the interpretation of the postures, colors, shapes, smells, and movements of everything, not just those their own species. Since language is our primary (or so we think) means of engagement we tend to focus on the concepts and ideas that are born of abstract thought (language = symbol) which reveals the parentage of math and logic.
Perhaps neglecting an old-brain form of gestural communication is the “privilege” of higher thinking and its outer cortex, but it is in our limbic system, our ancient brain, wherein lies the most powerful forces in the body. Within the ancient drives dwells the reaction to physical movements directly around us—including the shapes within a composition or the nature of a brushstroke.

mouse over the image for the link to Robischon Gallery

(Note: even language itself is interpreted gesturally; vowels themselves are understood in reaction to the consonants they become. Their comprehension relies on the transitory (re: behavior) quality, a movement between sharp distinct sounds.)

Returning to the premise of style: we now are armed with the knowledge that the manner of performance, the actions that construct a visual statement, are “read” gesturally by a viewer. It is this pattern of behaviors that denotes or characterizes a particular style, it is what makes works indefinable, and in some cases unique.

mouse over the photo for a link to Robischon Gallery

Notes on Style

“Just as the pearl is the oyster’s affliction,
so style is perhaps the discharge from a deeper wound.”
Flaubert

According the to Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, STYLE  is both a noun and verb.

I1.  an ancient implement for writing on wax, etc,, having appointed end for incising characters and a flat broad end for erasures and smoothing the writing (stylus)

I2.  a pointer, pin, etc., for indicating time, position especially the gnomon of a sundial

I3.  a narrowed elongated projection of the ovary bearing the stigma

I4.  a terminal bristle on the antenna of a dipteran fly

II7.  a legal, official, or honorific title; the recognized or correct designation for a person or thing.

II8a.  the characteristic manner of literary expression of a particular writer, school, period, etc.
b. (features pertaining to) the form and mode of expression of a text, as opposed to what is said or expressed

III11b.  a particular or characteristic way, form or technique of making or producing a thing, esp. a work of art; a way of executing a task; a manner of performance

The purpose of this essay is not to disclose further definitions of the term as such, but to expand a maker’s awareness of style being a function of expression.

The need for expression itself can be found in the distance between where one is, where one was, where one is going; the latter two encompassed in where one is not.  The quandary of the time and our death that it brings evokes well-worn reactions of longing, rapture, fear, anger, sadness, melancholia (English spleen or French ennui).  Indeed the only reason to express is because of the disparity between our eternal comfortable consciousness and its impending dissolution.  Gods don’t make art.  Expression then is an outward vocalization of a creature with a multi-dimensional focus; a precise and loving description of now as seen through the eyes of eternity.  It was said of Flaubert that, “his vision could focus, with equal acuity, at six inches, at six feet, and at infinity!”