My #1 Tip for All Artists

Last week, I shared 5 tips to find your art style, but yesterday, I realised I had missed one very important tip - perhaps THE most important. 

As I said last week, many artists struggle with the idea of finding their style. New painters wonder how they can ever find a unique way to paint, and more experienced artists find it challenging to make a shift from what they already know.

When we feel this way, we can become impatient. We know what we want ... why can't we just get there?!

This week, I want to share a story before I give my advice...

Twelve years ago, I visited several artists as part of North Yorkshire Open Studios. At the time, I wasn't planning an art career - that would have seemed preposterous! I was making a lot of ink drawings and I was thinking about going back to college to study art, but I saw this as a hobby. I simply didn't believe I had the talent for it to be anything more.

So, I visited these studios with an eye to purchasing, not making art. I loved all the studios - I couldn't believe that people got to work in these beautiful places, and I was amazed (and a little intimidated) by the quality of the work. One stood out for me - the artist's name was David Cook, and his paintings were large, wild, emotional abstracts. You could feel the energy coming off them - they were alive with feeling, jumping with colour, full of passion.

My favourite was a tall narrow painting - maybe 6 feet by 3 feet wide - that was full of dark colours and wild marks, interspersed with small patches of bright colour and light marks. The title also grabbed me - I can't remember it exactly, but it was something like 'Driving Back from Keighley in the Rain." Having often driven back form Keighley in the rain, I immediately recognised it. I desperately wanted to own the painting, but it was £1,400 and we just couldn't afford it.

I have never forgotten that painting and the way it made me feel.

As I developed my own painting practice, I think that piece was a prime driver in my developing desire to paint raw, free, expressive abstracts. Over the years, I have come close to expressing freely - sometimes I have even made a painting that felt truly free. But mostly, I have missed the mark. I have made paintings I like and paintings that others enjoy, but I haven't often felt the way I felt in front of david's beautiful painting.

But in recent weeks, I have felt something unlock inside me. Maybe it's the loss I've experienced (four key figures in my life have died in the last 3 years). Or maybe it's because I'm now spending a lot of time in my very favourite landscape of all - the northern Yorkshire Dale and Cumbria. Whatever has brought about this new freedom, I suddenly find myself working on large canvases with a new level of wild abandon. 

Yesterday, I felt so free that I couldn't even be bothered with brushes. Instead, I donned plastic gloves and worked mainly with my hands. It was so freeing! It felt less like painting and more like flying.

When I posted the painting on social media, someone asked "which colours did you use?" I had to answer honestly that I had no idea. I just kept grabbing things and mixing like a maniac. The process felt amazing and the result is a painting I truly love. 

It's been twelve years since I stood in front of David Cook's paintings and felt a sense of awe. Yesterday, I stood in front of one of my own, and felt the same way.

And this brings us to my number one piece of advice: be patient!

I know no-one wants to hear this, but it takes times to make the art you want to make. It takes practice and dedication. It takes commitment and sacrifice. It means missing TV shows or lie-ins so you can carve out time to paint. And most of all, it takes a willingness to fail over and over again.

I love the painting I made, but I still don't think I'm all the way there ... I want to get even more free, even more expressive, even more raw. So I have to keep going and along the way, I will need to keep failing. There is simply no other path to where I want to be.

So that is my public service announcement for today ...be patient with yourself and your work. You will get there if you just keep going :)

"Driving home over Buttertubs"