Copycat

One of the biggest criticisms about my art I've received over the years is that I don't have my own style. The most extreme and mean-spirited was in high school (naturally). Even back then, I was able to replicate most paintings or art that I saw. So I did. I drew anime (e.g. Japanese cartoons), reproduced famous paintings and works of art, and pretty much had fun with the challenge. I don't remember ever being complimented. I just remember being called a fraud and a copycat. I never tried passing my work off as the originals, but people sneered and called me talentless.

I burned and threw out everything. Perhaps an over-reaction, but in my defense I was a teenager. And it wasn't "real art" anyway, right? I even destroyed original art that I had created. I figured that since it was too "close" to the original subject that it also wasn't art. I didn't see an artistic difference between looking at a picture of a cat and painting it, and looking of a painting of a cat and painting it. It was all just practice to me.

My talent had a tiny bit of  use. I got a job at a photo lab and one of my responsibilities was restoring old photographs. Back before everything went digital, this required actually painting on the original photographs, and then taking a picture of the fixed photo. That would be the person's new photo. People would bring in photographs that were over a century old with water damage, light damage, ripped, and a hundred other possibilities. I was VERY good at  it. Often they would be happier with the original painted photograph than the new one. Twenty some years later, I wish I  had taken my talents to an art museum to restore old paintings. However back then, I didn't realize such a thing existed. And I had no one around to guide me.

That is probably one of the reasons why I don't like to do realism today. I don't want to be accused of copying, of not having a style, or other garbage like that. My grumpy butt says that if you want realism, take a picture. But it is more than being grumpy and cynical. It's pretty terrible to tell a kid their talent is essentially fraud. I don't think it's necessarily a touchy subject for me anymore, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it.

I let them get to me because I was young. And because in a way, it was (and still is) true. However mostly because I don't have ONE style. Whether I learned so many styles by replicating art when I was younger, or because I defensively created a lot of styles because I was told I didn't have one, I have a lot of options. So it is still true that I don't have my own style, because you can't necessarily look at my body of art and know it is me. Or even the same person. But maybe I don't want to be seen. That's why I usually paint under an alias. I have a very famous artist last name, and it just brought more mocking. I actively resisted being an artist because of it. Even now, I almost exclusively create art in ways I have never created before. Just so that it's TOTALLY NEW AND ORIGINAL, FOLKS! So what if I don't have just one idea.