I’ve never been compared to…

I read an artist’s self written profile on-line in which they wrote “My work has been compared to Norman Rockwell.“

OK, so, first off, Norman Rockwell was an illustrator and painter. This person is a photographer who after taking the photo uses software to alter the photo to the point where it no longer looks like a photo. OK could be nice, but the results is that all of the work has a dingy brown hue to it and they just lack any life. But, that’s a matter of taste. They claim to sell thousands of dollars of work every year, yet, I’ve never seen anything from them on a ‘sold today’ page on any of the print on demand sites. A lie, perhaps, ego.. for certain. To bad for them.

But back to the statement of being compared; to me, it’s a joke. I mean, so what?

You can compare an orange to a daisy and find they are nothing like each other. You made the comparison and the orange could say it had been compared to a daisy. So what?

Be careful how you make comparisons.

My reason for writing this is not only to make the point about a comparisons as I did, but to write about how I have never had someone remark that my work was similar or in any way like that of someone else.

I think that is a good thing, a great thing.

I’d much rather that my art is taken as just mine. My own style, my own take on photography and my own ways of presenting the subject.

I feel that if one aspires to be like another artist, they lose themselves in that pursuit. To aspire to the level of regard or achieve sales or fame as another artist has it not bad. One might aspire to, for example, have their work appear in a particular publication or hung in a museum. Wonderful.

But, do so on your own terms, with your own artistic expression. 

Have your own vision and make that happen.