Break Rules

Advice to artists: create a style and stick with it, become famous and own a highly marketable brand. The same for any business.

Usually an artist chooses to concentrate on one discipline; like classical piano, poetry, fiction writing, or specific type of painting. He masters a style and gives it his own personality, perhaps becoming famous as a brand. If that brand goes big he is world famous. For instance Van Gogh. He made paintings in his own style, not popular at the time, but highly identifiable. Exactly 100 years after he died, Vincent’s  painting, Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold at auction for 163 million dollars.

My own trajectory as an artist is varied. I have a huge interest in the world and find that if I am in a niche I get uncomfortable. So I break rules and surprise people with explorations into the unknown. Then I also surprise myself.

My greatest success as an artist has been as a landscape painter. I am grateful for being able to make a living with my painting (see Steven Boone website). I often pinched myself to be sure I was not dreaming. “And I have not had to be a waiter on the side,” I told folks.

Along the way I have written a memoir, poetry, and magazine articles. I have been a publisher, made photographs, learned graphic design, been a printmaker and owned art galleries. 

I go in different directions simultaneously.

Recently I looked through old files of photographs and came upon some made between 15 and 20 years ago I share today. 

A Unique Brand

"Road To Bliss"

In business, it is important to create a “brand” which identifies a product as desirable to the public. There are many examples of highly successful branding in commerce, where the name and image become so engrained as to gain legions of faithful followers. Even in the wide-open realm of art, it is often remarked that to be successful, a brand must be established. There are many artists that develop a style that is uniquely their own, and when they become successful, they continue within the brand that they have developed, afraid to go outside its boundaries.

"Target Hangup"

I never have been able to live within creative boundaries. I like to experiment, and even though I have been most successful as a landscape painter, and established a recognizable style that could be called a brand, I have nonetheless continued going beyond boundaries. It would be much easier, and I would be richer if I just stayed on a branded track. People like dependability and are uneasy being surprised. They want to know that what they like is current, and not a passing phase.

Artists need to be able to go through phases and explore. This worked for Picasso, DaVinci, and a handful of other art greats, but for the most part, once an artist has developed a unique brand and is identified with it, he is also slave to it—at the risk of being rejected and having to start again from scratch.  

                 

How did Pablo Picasso pull it off? The force of his personality became the brand. He was PICASSO—and everyone expected new surprises from his genius. This would not have worked for his American contemporary, Norman Rockwell, whose brand was his marvelous illustrations of homespun Americana. To change his formula even a little, would have elicited howls of complaint.  

"Migration"

I have written of this creative dilemma previously: The Tightrope Walker

See more Steven Boone artwork: Stevenboone.com