When you're experimenting you have to try so many things before you choose what you want, and you may go days getting nothing but exhaustion. Fred Astaire
It is often said to me, when visitors to my gallery have seen the work on the walls and discovered that I made it all, “It is surprising to see the diversity!” The Steven Boone Gallery shows the full range of my work, not just what sells. Usually, artists find a formula that works for them and if it is successful, then they repeat it—making a “brand” that it identifiable to the public and drives sales. I admit I have a style of my own—landscape painting using a palette knife and thick paint with bold color, which has driven sales for me. Yet, along the way, through thirty-five years of being a professional artist, I have frequently left the familiar path and gone into the unknown. This deviation is from inner necessity, not for financial gain. In fact, trying new approaches to art is scary, since it requires going into the mysterious and the public may not want to go there with you.
Art flourishes where there is a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment; but when caution comes in you get repetition, and repetition is the death of art. Alfred North Whitehead
It is winter, and this is the perfect time to go into the unknown. Sales are down because tourists are gone, and I am not distracted by needing to replace inventory. The hours are plentiful to just experiment.
Twenty-five years ago I went through a period of producing abstract art, and now, I am returning to that realm. I am going with the creative flow . . . using the palette knife and thick paint, but experimenting with surprising combinations. Entirely new for me are mounting my figure drawings on board, coating them, and painting. I am pushing the color envelope into new territory.
I would say to any artist: 'Don't be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.' Edward Weston
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