How to Study an Artist’s Style (and What It Can Teach You About Space, Structure, and Artistic Voice)

How do you study an art style?
How do you learn from artists whose work shifts between abstraction and representation?
How do you analyze art styles in a way that goes beyond surface aesthetics and into decision making?

And how do you find your own unique style without copying someone else’s work?

In this Style Study Session, we will use the six qualities of style to understand the work of Richard Diebenkorn, and more importantly, explore how you can use the same framework to develop a grounded, intentional artistic voice.

Diebenkorn is an artist many people recognize even if they cannot always explain why his work feels so balanced and so alive. His paintings move between abstraction and landscape, structure and openness, control and intuition. His work is quiet, but deeply intentional.

That tension is worth paying attention to in your own work too. Many artists believe they have to choose between structure or freedom, planning or intuition, abstraction or representation. Diebenkorn reminds us that some of the most compelling work lives between those extremes.

And that intentionality is something we can study directly. Not to copy his paintings, but to better understand how artists make decisions that create cohesion, rhythm, and emotional presence.

If you would like me to study another artist, living or dead, leave their name in the comments so I can feature them in a future Style Study Session.

What Defines an Artist’s Style?

Style is the unique way an artist shares their voice through their work.

We often recognize an artist’s work instantly because of their style, but that style is not accidental. It is not a surface aesthetic or a single technique. It is built from repeated, intentional choices over time.

This is important because many artists think style is something they “find” all at once. In reality, style is often the natural result of repeated decisions, preferences, curiosities, and problem-solving strategies accumulating over years of work.

An artist’s style is built from six interconnected qualities:

• Elements and Principles of Art
• Medium and Materials
• Genre
• Theme
• Influence
• Personal Experience

As we move through these categories, I encourage you not just to observe Diebenkorn’s choices, but to ask yourself:

Which of these qualities already show up consistently in my own work?
And which ones do I want to develop more intentionally?

By studying these six qualities, we can understand why an artist’s work looks and feels the way it does, and how we can consciously shape our own style through similar awareness.

I go more deeply into this topic in the video linked above my head or in the text link below.

Hey there! 👋 I’m Carrie

I want to remind you of something important. You are already an artist.

Here on Artist Strong, I help creatives stop feeling like copyists or hobbyists and start creating meaningful bodies of work that reflect their unique voice and perspective.

If you are ready to move beyond scattered learning and want support to build clarity, structure, and follow through into your art practice, I am here to help.

You can sign up for my free workshop, How to Transform Your Ideas Into Artwork That’s Uniquely Yours. Thousands of artists have already joined. The workshop is completely free and the link is below.

Now let us explore Richard Diebenkorn through this lens.

1. Elements and Principles of Art

Line

Diebenkorn’s line work is subtle but essential. Lines often define edges of color fields or architectural structures within the composition. They are not expressive in a gestural sense, but instead act as stabilizing forces, guiding the eye through the painting.

This is a powerful reminder that line does not always need to be dramatic to be effective. Sometimes line exists to create clarity, organization, or pause within a composition.

What role does line play in your own work right now? Is it expressive, structural, or something else entirely?

Color

Color is one of the most defining aspects of his style. In his Ocean Park series, he uses muted blues, soft yellows, warm pinks, and earthy neutrals. These colors interact in quiet tension, creating both harmony and subtle vibration.

Notice that these colors are not trying to overwhelm the viewer. They create atmosphere through relationship. This can be especially helpful if you feel pressure to make your work louder or more saturated to feel “successful.” Sometimes restraint creates more emotional complexity.

Composition

Composition is central to Diebenkorn’s voice. His paintings often feel like aerial maps or fragmented architectural spaces. He balances large fields of color with intersecting lines that divide and reconnect space. Nothing feels accidental, even when it appears intuitive.

This is one of the biggest lessons here: intuitive work is not the same as unconsidered work. His paintings feel alive because they balance spontaneity with structure.

Where in your own work could composition become more intentional rather than automatic?

Space and Form

He constantly explores the tension between flatness and depth. His work hovers between abstraction and landscape, where space feels both constructed and discovered. You can feel him organizing the painting while also responding to it.

That balance between planning and responding is often where artistic voice begins to emerge. Your style is not just what you make, it is how you make decisions while making it.

2. Medium and Materials

Diebenkorn worked primarily in oil on canvas, acrylic paint, and charcoal and drawing materials.

His transition from figurative work to abstraction was deeply connected to how he used paint itself. He often layered and revised compositions, allowing earlier decisions to remain visible beneath newer ones.

His surfaces carry history. You can see evidence of correction, adjustment, and evolution within a single painting.

This is especially meaningful for artists who struggle with perfectionism. The work becomes evidence of thinking rather than performance.

That distinction matters. Does your process allow for discovery, or does it pressure you to resolve everything too quickly?

3. Genre

Diebenkorn’s work moves fluidly across genres:

• Abstract Expressionism
• Color Field painting
• Landscape painting
• Figurative painting (early work)

He is most associated with the Bay Area Figurative Movement, which bridged abstraction and representation.

What makes his work unique is that he never fully abandons one mode for another. Instead, he allows them to inform each other.

This can be incredibly freeing if you feel boxed in by genre. You do not have to choose a permanent category in order to develop a recognizable voice. Often, your style strengthens through the conversation between multiple interests.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below: what’s one tension or contrast in your own work that you’ve been exploring lately? Structure and looseness? Observation and imagination? Precision and emotion?

4. Theme

Diebenkorn’s recurring themes include:

• Landscape and environment
• Light and atmospheric space
• Structure versus openness
• Memory and place
• Observation and reinterpretation

Even in abstraction, his paintings feel grounded in lived environments. You can sense architecture, coastlines, and spatial experience without literal depiction.

His work is about how we organize what we see.

And that idea extends beyond painting. Every artist filters experience differently. Two people can observe the same landscape and translate it into completely different visual structures. That organizational process is part of artistic voice.

5. Influence

Diebenkorn was influenced by:

• Henri Matisse, especially compositional clarity and color harmony
• Abstract Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning
• Paul Cézanne and structured observation of nature
• The landscapes of California
• Bay Area Figurative Movement artists such as David Park and Elmer Bischoff

Henri Matisse in particular had a lasting influence on his sense of balance between structure and freedom.

Diebenkorn absorbed multiple traditions and synthesized them into a visual language that was entirely his own.

This is a clear reminder that influence is not the opposite of originality. He did not avoid influence—he transformed it.

A more useful question than “How do I avoid being influenced?” might be:

What am I consistently drawn to across artists, subjects, and experiences?

Those patterns often point directly toward your emerging voice.

6. Personal Experience

Richard Diebenkorn was born in Portland, Oregon and later lived and worked primarily in California.

His environment played a central role in his work. The light, space, and architecture of the West Coast became foundational to his visual thinking.

This is a valuable reminder that your environment shapes you more than you may realize. The places you move through become part of your visual language over time.

He moved between abstraction and figuration throughout his career, not as contradiction, but as exploration. His shifts reflect an ongoing search rather than a fixed identity.

I think many artists need permission to hear this: shifting does not mean you lack a style. It may mean your voice is still expanding.

He once described painting as a process of discovery rather than execution, which is clearly visible in his layered, evolving surfaces.

How to Apply This to Your Own Art

Studying Diebenkorn offers powerful lessons:

• Let composition guide your decisions, not just subject matter
• Allow your work to move between control and intuition
• Study how color relationships create structure, not just mood
• Embrace revision as part of your style, not something to hide
• Pay attention to the spaces between forms as much as the forms themselves

Your style develops through how you organize what you see, not just what you depict.

That means your voice is already forming every time you make decisions about emphasis, structure, color, pacing, subject matter, or revision. The goal is not to force a style prematurely, but to become more conscious of the patterns already emerging in your work.

Summary

Richard Diebenkorn’s style is defined by clarity, restraint, and exploration.

His work shows us that style does not require a single fixed approach. Instead, it can live in the space between ideas, evolving through continued observation and adjustment.

Perhaps that is one of the most encouraging lessons from studying artists like Diebenkorn. Artistic voice is not something you arrive at once and protect forever. It is something you continue refining through curiosity, experimentation, and sustained attention.

As your art grows, your style will grow with it, shaped by your choices, your environment, and your willingness to keep exploring rather than settling too quickly.

Tell me:
What part of Diebenkorn’s approach resonates most with your own work?
And how might space or composition play a bigger role in your art practice?

Remember, proudly call yourself an artist.
Together, we are Artist Strong.

Sources

• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) – Richard Diebenkorn collection and essays
  https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/richard-diebenkorn/
• The Getty Museum – Richard Diebenkorn biography and works
  https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1980/richard-diebenkorn-american-1922-1993/
• Tate Museum – Richard Diebenkorn overview
  https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/richard-diebenkorn-1025
• National Gallery of Art – Diebenkorn works and context
  https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1325.html
• MoMA – Bay Area Figurative Movement context and Diebenkorn references
  https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/bay-area-figurative-school
• Smithsonian American Art Museum – Diebenkorn biography and collection
  https://americanart.si.edu/artist/richard-diebenkorn-1212
• Richard Diebenkorn Foundation – https://diebenkorn.org/collections/6673/objects/