In modern art painting, a personal style is required to represent the artists through their artworks. To have distinctive artworks, there must be a consistent repetition in the specific aspects of the different paintings by the same artist. Yet at a certain point, this repetition can result in a monotonous and predictable artwork. This paper intended to discover what efforts artists make to avoid monotony and repetitiveness in their artworks. In this paper we looked at the efforts of three modern artists: Popo Iskandar, Ahmad Sadali, and Fadjar Sidik. It was found that even when there is a consistent repetition between artworks, these artists continue to experiment with the visual elements of their art so that the artworks will vary from each other. The visual elements varied in the painting were: (1) object, including type, amount, color, and background; and (2) object composition, including setting, direction, and attitude.
Keywords: personal style, modern painting, monotonous, stereotype