Finding Your Voice and Identity as an Impressionist

Your Identity as an Impressionist & Finding Your Voice 

Even though the Impressionist masters often painted together and shared ideas about materials and methods, each still developed their painting style. Your distinct personality comes through as an impressionist painter by your approach to your subject and through the methods and techniques of the canon of Impressionism, such as personalizing your palette and application of brushstrokes.

Whatever subject you choose, you must recognize yourself in it and paint what your heart wants to say. The goal is to refine your ideas into a cohesive expression that others can enjoy. A recurring theme in the impressionist identity is pursuing a special moment in life seen with fresh eyes.

Finding your Voice

First, to remember, there are no clones in Impressionism:

Start with:

·      Accepting your natural abilities and current limitations

·      Be childlike

·      Slow down

·      Reflect upon what is truly important to you

·      Find yourself in the subject

·      Paint what inspires you

·      Use your ‘Golden Color’ and create your palette around it*

 

*How to find your Golden Color will be a future lesson in this Master Class

The Impressionist’s Foundation 

“Painting is my second self. There are times when I paint; I feel raptured. Time and space seem to fold, providing me the most wonderful imaginative encounter, a state of being fully alive in the moment.” Dmitri

Whenever artists channel their creativity toward what is good, beautiful, and true, there is a sensation of wholeness that accompanies the painting process. 

My Dancing Brush will be different from your Dancing Brush. Monet's Dancing Brush was different than Degas'. With Impressionism, it's not so much that you paint, but why you paint. 

When your Dancing Brush becomes alive in the moment, it will be as if your painting seems to paint itself. It is in this state an artist reaches what I call a 'creative bliss'—anyone who has experienced this elevated level of painting longs to have this passion happen more often. 

Working in both the science and the poetry of Impressionism, the painting process carries the mark of its author. Impressionism is noted for its exciting and sensitive brushwork patterns, becoming part of the identity of an artist, one's own creative DNA.