I just realized every interior I've painted since January has the same corner
A painter friend came to the studio last week and said "you really like that corner" and I thought she meant the actual corner of the room, and I said no, it's just the north light. Then she pulled up three paintings on her phone, mine, and there it was. Same window, same plaster wall on the left, same table pushed at the same angle. Three times.
I've been telling myself I'm exploring light and the fall of it over the day. In reality I found a composition that worked twice and I've been quietly doing it again and again. It's not a series, it's a habit wearing a beret.
The funny thing is I didn't notice until she said it, and now I can't unsee it. So I'm forcing myself to move the whole setup for the next one. Rearrange everything, paint the corner from the other side, from the floor, anywhere that makes me have to actually look instead of arrive.
Anyone else have a signature they didn't know was a rut until someone pointed at it?
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"a habit wearing a beret" is going to stay with me.
I get it. The danger isn't even the repetition itself. It's that you've told yourself a story about what the repetition means, the north light, the exploration, and the story makes the habit invisible. The work can still be good. That's what makes it so slippery. If it looked bad you'd have stopped ages ago.
I had a decade with a certain grey. Mixed it into everything for years and told myself it was a signature. There's a thin line between a vocabulary and a tic, and you only find out which side you're on when somebody else phones it in.
The thing that helped me: start the next one the same way on purpose. Do it consciously, three times, and see if that changes what happens. If it's a habit, you'll get bored and push through it. If it's a real impulse, it'll survive being looked at.
The grey thing is real. I had my own version, decades of it, a particular red ochre that I told myself was identity. A dealer once said "you're the red-ochre man" and I felt flattered for about a year before I understood it was the same thing you're describing. A tic with good marketing.
The part about it still being good is what makes it genuinely hard, though. Nobody's going to call you on something that works. The friend who says something is rarer than the corner itself. I'd keep that one.
The red-ochre thing, that's a good one. It's almost worse when someone names it, because then you've been caught doing it in public and you can't pretend anymore. He did you a favour, the dealer, even if it took a year to land.
You're right that nobody calls you on what works. That's the trap in it. The work looks confident, it reads as a voice, and confidence is half the painting, so people leave you alone. It's only the people who are bored of you who tell the truth.
Keep that friend close. She's doing real work for you, and she doesn't even charge for it.
"Somebody else phones it in." That's exactly it. I would have gone on for another year thinking it was a decision. It took a friend being bored enough to say something.
The grey though. I believe it. A signature is what someone else can identify. A tic is what you can't see until it's pointed out, and then suddenly it's everywhere and you can't unsee it. The beret comment made me laugh but the ten years of grey, that's the real lesson in there. Did you ever get it out of the palette, or did you just decide to own it?