Sticking with My Style

I've had a problem. I do not paint realistic pictures, and I when I try, the colors are wrong, the lines are wrong, the shapes are wrong, everything is wrong. I have learned this lesson over and over. Most brutally one evening in art class, when our teacher, Marian, looked over my shoulder as I was trying to paint a straight line or a straight curved line, or something.

And she spoke in a voice that I had only heard when she was arguing with Irwin, another painter. "What are you doing? That's not your style. This is your style." And she took the paintbrush from my hand and splotsched green paint right through the middle of my picture. "That's how you paint," she repeated. I went home and started over. 

And still I struggle. I work from photos, and the photos scream in their squirky voices, "We are photos. We are real." And I fall for those voices every time. The above painting comes from a picture of a young woman whose photo I took in Las Vegas. She was pleasant, charming really, and her face was covered with studs and rings. I liked her from the moment I asked her how she dealt with a cold. She said in a matter-of-fact tone, "I take out the rings and studs." 

So she let me take her picture, and I fell right back into my rut of wanting to paint her in a realistic style. So I was desperate one night before art class and decided I needed to talk with someone who knew something about my messy style. I began a meditation in which I took myself along a colorful path to a dead German expressionist painter, Karl Schmitt-Rottluff.  He was sitting on his porch smoking a pipe. Here's one of his paintings: 

And in my meditating mind, he asked me what I wanted. I said I had a problem. I said I kept trying to paint in a realistic style, and it wasn't working. And he erupted. "Oh, no no no. (He was speaking in German, which would be Ach nein nein nein. It's more brutal than English). You can't paint realistically. You have to screw up the lines and shapes. You have to mess with colors. You have to feel sexy. You have to PAINT SEXY THINGS. What has gotten into you? You have to have fun. Don't go getting all serious."

So I said, "Well, she's a nice young woman, and I don't want to turn her into a nightmare."

And then he said something that astonished me: "Well, then you have to get inside her, you have see the world from her point of view, you have to feel colors like she feels colors. You have to feel the way she feels. You can't just go violate her with your colors."

And that ended the conversation. I knew what I had to do. That night I went to art class and let fly. Most of all, I tried not to use hideous colors. I tried to use softer colors.  I know. I know. She looks grotesque. But I feel kindly toward her, and that's what matters to me. I don't expect you to like it. That's OK. Go ahead and be tasteless. Marian likes it, and that's quite enough for me. I haven't asked Herr Schmitt-Rottluff what he thinks of it. He's dead. Oh, I think I said that.

Who are your mentors, living or dead? Do you have a hard time sticking with your style?