For Artists: Discovering Your Visual Voice

In the Intermediate Painting course I teach, we are going to start the semester exploring visual voice, an artist’s unique form of visual expression. Making a thought map is a good way to get at some of the themes that thread through your work.

To create your map, start by writing down major themes in your work. In my case they are nature, collections, garden/walks (daily observations), pattern, and craft. From there, you’ll add additional branches. For instance, one of my branches from the nature is the word insects. Insects has its own branches—cicadas, bees, moths, etc.

As the map develops, you’ll start to see connections and places of overlap. For example on my map, the word specimens connects nature, pattern, and collections. This is where your unique visual voice starts to emerge.

Once the map is made, look through your photos and make and album of things that show up on the map. Below are three images of my work and six photos taken in my garden, from a vintage book, and on travels of things that show up on my map.

Even though I’m pretty intentional about documenting what inspires me, I’m still surprised by unexpected connections between the things I’m drawn to and my art.

One important note: You’ll notice that I don’t have work by other contemporary artists on my map or in my photos. That’s very intentional because while we learn a lot from the work of other artists, our visual voice is unique to us.

As someone who looks at art on a daily basis, I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at other artists’ work. Of course we should! Just not for this purpose—it can cloud the vision.

Happy map making! Let the process be fun and exploratory.