Artistic Influence and Individual Style
featuring Andy Evansen
Andy Evansen is well-traveled. This conversation came about when Andy and Gabor were looking at watercolor books and some older Australian painters. You can see how these guys affected some of the Australian painters today at the turn of the century. you see it in England going back to Ed Westen and how he influenced Trevor Chamberlain and John Yardley and how they have influenced younger artists coming up as well. You can see how influence is a regional effect. Even now on Instagram, Andy is friends with many watercolor artists from India and the middle east.
“The more you do it, the more you have something that is uniquely your own and becomes harder to duplicate.”
It is interesting phenomenon how we all tend to paint like each other and you can spot it a mile away. In this country, there are not a lot of watercolor artists painting the landscape. America, going back to those pioneering watercolors in the 40’s, kinda started it all. But, even today, if you go to some of the bigger shows there are not a lot of watercolor landscape paintings. It is a lot of abstraction. Nothing is wrong with that, it is just an interesting observation Andy noticed. He is one of the few watercolor painters in those shows that has more traditional landscape paintings.
For someone who is trying to break away and have their own voice in watercolor: it is not wrong to be influenced by other artists! We are all influenced by things. Andy is influenced by many British watercolor artists like Trevor Chamberlain. He loves the simplicity of his watercolors and the nice combination of wet on wet and hard edges that he captures. Even though Andy is influenced by Chamberlain’s style, he is still painting his own subjects. He is not painting the same scenes, but he has learned Chamberlain’s techniques by looking at his work. It is a lot like handwriting. The more you do it, the more you have something that is uniquely your own and becomes harder to duplicate. It is more recognizable as your own. Most of it happens over time.
“When you start going out and painting from life, it makes your work unique to you and your location. ”
The more you paint, it becomes a natural evolution of developing your own style. When you are working from photo references, you can pick and choose and find scenes that match the scenes of people you admire. They are not as personal. When you start going out and painting from life, it makes your work unique to you and your location. That is when it really starts to become and develop your own style, and find your own voice. Andy looks at his own experience. When he first started, for the first 6 or 7 years he worked solely in the studio from reference photos. When he looks back on some of those paintings, he realizes how bad they were in comparison to now. He has learned the importance of simplifying the subject matter, better drawing, and neutrality that helps color. Again, you just learn and improve as you go.
To learn in depth with Andy, join him through his mentoring course or video downloads:
Listen to Gabor and Andy on the Paint & Clay podcast here.