I don’t think a mixture of styles has much to do with “maturity,” though. A given exhibit has to hang together, but there are myriad ways to manage that and each venue has its own peculiarities that must be managed along with the art.

Perhaps Birgit has the insight that works for me — a change of “style” (however one defines it) within a single exhibit can be restful, can add a bit of zing, can postulate a more interesting mind at work. I’m not much for monotony, I guess.

I also love it that the photograph looks like a drawing — that’s an additional zing.

“I’d love to hear more about how photography has influenced you and given you ideas.”

Off the top of my head photography has influenced me in a couple of major ways:

1. I recently have been looking at photography and mystery. Meaning that I used to take the “reality” of the photographic image for granted, and it used to really limit how I looked at it. Photography was so literal for me - it couldn’t become anything else than what it was.

But lately I see so much potential in photography to introduce more open ended stories or images (the cookie/water and snow photo we looked at recently comes to mind!), and this helps me think about narrative potential in representational painting in different ways. I have a book about melodrama in photography (sorry I am at work and don’t remember the title), and a lot of the photographers seem to accomplish a story by creating a frozen moment with lots of potential. The images make me wonder what came before and after. And compostion also plays a role. Nan Goldin is one who comes to mind as creating a narrative beyond the edges of the photo, although she is not in the book I mentioned.

2. Capturing fleeting moments of time. I think about this a lot, esp since being part of this blog and writing with so many photographers. It is a “duh” thing for some maybe, but for me revolutionary to catch these moments on film or pixels and then be able to go from there. So whether you paint from the photo or just jump off from it into other imagery - the technology allows me to work on my current series, as they are views from under bedsheets…painting under there would get extremely hot and I get to shoot hundreds of images before choosing what I want to paint. When I did a series of paintings of open mouths, photography and video were invaluable as well, for obvious reasons. Asking people to pose for the photos was hard enough, much less asking them to hold the pose for any length of time.

Ironically, photography has allowed me to paint some of my most mysterious, open ended work. SO something I used to take so literally has opened a new world to me!

Regarding styles, I meant to use the term to imply anything and everything that makes a piece recognizable as produced by the artist in question. Sometimes it’s really easy to “peg” someone, but often you have to study an oeuvre for some time before you can tell.

Karl,
I actually intended the bleed of the image into the background, though I’m not sure how effective its. Thanks for the van Eyck cue; I’ll have to look up the portrait in a book, hopefully one I have at home.

Leslie,
I’d love to hear more about how photography has influenced you and given you ideas.

Look at the portrait style of Jan van Eyck in his portrait of his wife — a painting which is the embodiment of minimalism — and compare this to one of his complex-scene paintings — for example, the Ghent Altarpiece. Jan van Eyck mastered the full range from simple to complex composition. I have seen both “styles” in the same show, but it never occurred to me to ask the question, “did the artist have a ‘mature’ vision?”

You write that you are “as much drawn to minimal subjects as complex ones.” You are in good company.

I cannot see the photograph well because of my internet connection here in Germany. I suspect that a border around the image might be a good idea though. The photo is so minimal that it seems to lose its edge and fuse into the white ground of this website.

Steve, your work makes me miss the wild wild west of Idaho where I lived for 3 years! That place has made a permanent mark on my soul!