Kaisa Mäki-Petäjä: Formation of Self and Finding Your Own Artistic Style 765ad6c032794638baa387086fac39dd

Searching “finding your own style art” produces 1 770 000 000 (1.77 billion) results on Google. It is a question no artist, professional or amateur, can escape. Even if one is not that concerned about their own style, the question is something one is destined to run into during their journey. It is something most artists seem to ponder, even fret. Do I have a personal, recognisable style? Am I style-wise original enough to stand out? Is my art authentic, i.e. do I have a style that sets my art apart from other artworks, and that feels like me? The fear of copying a style, of resembling some other artist seems to ail many, especially those in the early stages of their artist’s journey. 

Artistic style has much to so with artistic expression as a skill to express or depict something in the way one wants, but I propose that style is much more a question of self-exploration, and in this presentation I seek to problematise the urge to find one’s own style. Recognising the fundamental role of style in art theory, practice, and history, I will view finding one’s style as a serious quest that is deeply rooted in questions of self: self-realisation, self-knowledge and self-acknowledgement, self-acceptance, and self-affirmation and self-actualisation – in other words, as a way of answering to the question who and how I am. 

Works of Alva Nöe, Brene Brown, and Tim Ingold, and the concepts of being-in-the-world, self and no-self (Evan Thompson et.al.), unfolding, and becoming form the philosophical framework for this undertaking.