I Want to Paint Like ______ (fill in the blank)

Howard Hodgkins , Early Morning Light

J.M.W. Turner, Off  Margate

Edward Hopper, Stairway  at 48 rue de Lille

Marian Dioguardi, Fresh Air

Leslie Parke shared Edward Hopper's Staircase at 48 rue de Lille on FB this week. Once again, a Hopper painting took my breath away. So simple. So brown. So beautiful. There is an artist at work here, bringing more than the sum of the parts to a evocative and iconic image. 

That whistful quiet voice inside of me spoke "I wish I had painted that". It was this thought that brought me back to my student days when I was inspired to paint like Turner, Hopper, Hodgkins and so on and so on. Each new class brought forth another favorite artist. So what happened? Where are my painterly Turners? Where are my wildly open Hodgkins representations ? Where are my dark Hoppers? 

Surely at this skill level I am, more now than then, capable of mimicking the painter who I choose to be. But in the search for a truthness through observational painting I became aware that "I" was in between the observed subject and the resulting painting. I was shocked to find out I painted like me.

And as long as I am me, I will paint like me; whoever that "me" turns out to be. (Oh...but to have painted that stairway......)