Struggling to defign a "brand / style"

Finally the brand is the style with the other things being much more subtle

Too poster like!

Too poster like!

I worked on July 4, then had 3 days off. Artistically it was extremely productive. I mostly finished a painting based on a photo posted on facebook (with permission of course). I also broke through the barrier on a wedding portrait with which I have been blocked for a couple of years! It is now looking great. I still have another 10 hours or so to do on it, but it will work! I also started to rework a painting that failed and am well on the way to making it a success! On the down side, I worked my beach painting into a dead end, and will have to put it aside for a while. I think that the biggest thing though was my struggle with my brand. Everything I was working on started to look like a poster. I do not want to be painting posters. The idea was good, but it just wasn't working. After talking it through I started to see that I was pushing the brand think too far. I was trying to make everything have squares etc. in them. In this case it just didn't work. After 10 attempts, I finally come up with an image that I thought might just work. To get there though I had to find the sea again. I am good at painting water and the sea as well as figures. To this end with great difficulty, had to get rid of some background figures as well. On the one hand I have to let my style develop, but on the other, I have to make it happen with sheer hard work. I would now define it as; figurative representational work that is colorful and beautiful with a combination of looseness and well defined focus. The subjects have aspects of contradiction in them that is brought out by incorporated text into the composition. The text is difficult to decipher in order to demonstrate the need to invest of self to get below surface appearances in life. This is a kind of protest against the trend towards superficiality in society. The deconstruction of the text is also aimed at creating a catalyst to personalized interpretations by the viewer. My painting style is as much a part of the brand as the paintings compositional construction. This has been a huge breakthrough for me, but one that I am sure I will struggle with for some time to come. 

Finally, the portrait showed me that everything will not be about brand.  My portraiture is something that stands on its own, with its own style.