A search for style

Part of this path of discovery is to find out who I am in the art world. What are my strengths and weaknesses? What is my "style"? Do I even have a style or is everything just willy-nilly, adjusting to my mood for the moment?


I have started a series-painting in acrylic to help me begin my search for style. This series painting started as a an idea to do a series and a request from my husband to paint birch trees. We picked out seven canvases of varying sizes (I am not one to start small) and chose the fall colors we would like to see in the paintings.


Hurdle #1 - I had never painted a tree and I had no idea what a real birch tree even looked like. Being raised in Florida, it was not the typical tree I would see out my window and even though I had moved north, I still had never seen one. Granted, I had seen a painting or two that used a birch theme, but they did not really tell me what an actual birch tree looked like. So I searched the Internet looking for an idea of how to paint a tree I had not seen. I found quite a few pictures and paintings which all gave me great ideas ... and to my chagrin, I realized we actually had a birch tree right behind our house in a neighbor's yard.


Hurdle #2 - Knowing what I wanted to create without having an idea how to create it. My father was a painter, and when he was alive, I would call him up and ask him if I had a question about painting something. Unfortunately, he passed away 5 years ago so I have found myself figuring things out mostly on my own. I did take art lessons for a short while in the fall to reignite that spark inside me. Now I find myself looking at books, the Internet, and artists paintings to discover what I could use or what techniques I might try.


I am delving into this project learning about my subject along the way. Though I have always liked heavy textures (thanks to Van Gogh, and others), I also liked messing with multimedia and trying different styles. As it is, this project has become a discovery for my style. Each painting will have elements from the painting(s) tangent to it, but will also incorporate a study of a particular style - some created from my mind, most learned from others.