Help! I Hate… My Copycat

Every week, The Art Journal’s resident artworld Agony Aunt Charlotte Jansen answers your questions about access, gatekeeping and sticky social problems.

Have a burning question for her? Get in touch anonymously here.

 I’m an artist and I have spent more than two decades developing my own style, but lately I’ve found myself in a situation that’s making me feel blocked. Another artist based in the same city seems to be taking more than just inspiration from my work. It started with similar colour palettes and compositions, but over time they’ve begun producing pieces with themes, concepts, and even distinctive details that are very similar to mine.

I know artists influence one another, and I don’t believe anyone owns a palette or a subject matter. But this feels different. Friends have even started asking if we’re collaborating, and a few people have even assumed I’m copying them, because they have a larger following on social media. It’s incredibly frustrating to feel like my ideas are being overshadowed.

Do I confront them? Or do I change the way I share my work?

 Imitation is the highest form of flattery, the aphorism goes – but no-one ever actually feels that when they experience it. Anything on a scale of irritation to explosive rage better describes the visceral reaction to copying. It’s especially murky and difficult in the creative industries, where intellectual property is so contested and the line between inspiration and imitation is often hard to discern. There have been countless high profile copyright cases, where artists have sued brands for robbing their ideas – sometimes successfully. It proves how many ethical and legal issues there are around this. But it’s also not easy to be the one to call it out in public, as it puts your own work under close scrutiny.

Every artist absorbs influences, consciously or not. No one creates in a vacuum, and history is full of people responding to one another’s ideas. . Ideas inspire ideas and they evolve, they get remixed, rearranged, recontextualised. There are usually many people doing the same thing, at the same time – most of them just remain unrecognised.

After more than twenty years of developing your practice, you know your own visual language intimately. That doesn’t mean your work is entirely original, but you’re well placed to recognise when something feels unusually familiar. The fact that friends have started asking whether you’re collaborating suggests this isn’t simply happening inside your own head. At the same time, it’s worth separating two different problems. One is what this artist may or may not be doing. The other is what the situation is doing to you.

It doesn’t sound like this is a legal issue for you, at least at the moment. It is, however, an emotional one. You say you’re feeling blocked, and that’s understandable. Confidence in what you make is already rare enough in the artworld, and when you need to start second-guessing whether your next idea will immediately be echoed elsewhere, you can become hesitant about making any work at all. That hesitation is a far greater threat to your practice than any imitator. 

As frustrating as it is, resist the temptation to respond by making yourself smaller. Don’t stop sharing your work entirely or start abandoning ideas simply because someone else might follow them. Artists who spend their energy looking over their shoulder often end up losing sight of the road ahead.

Should you confront them? Possibly, but only if you’re clear about what you want to get out of it. If you’re looking for an apology or an admission that they’ve been borrowing from you, you're unlikely to get either. Most people don’t see themselves as copycats or imitators. They may genuinely believe they’re simply exploring similar territory, or they may become defensive if challenged, knowing that you’re right. Unless there has been outright plagiarism or copyright infringement, proving intent is almost impossible. And even if you do, I wonder whether outing them will be of much benefit to you.

If you have an existing relationship, an honest conversation can sometimes be worthwhile. Keep it calm, factual and centred on your own experience rather than accusations. “I’ve noticed our recent work has become remarkably similar, and people have begun confusing our practices. I wanted to mention it because it’s affecting how I feel about sharing my work.” But equally, you don’t owe anyone that conversation. Sometimes the healthiest response is not to engage at all. That’s what I did when I noticed a colleague copying my work for a time. Eventually it stopped. Sometimes people are just trying to figure out their own voice, and they get bored. If your ideas keep moving and evolving, it’ll be hard for anyone to keep up the copycat act.

One thing that often distinguishes an original artist is depth of engagement. Those who know will know the difference between easily replicable surface elements – a colour palette, a compositional device, recurring motifs. What cannot easily be copied is the accumulated thinking beneath twenty years of making. Your influences, your failures, your experiments, your instincts and your lived experience all feed into the work in ways another artist can’t simply imitate. That’s personal to you. That’s as close to originality as it gets.

There are practical steps you can take too. Document your work carefully. Keep dated sketches, notes and process photographs. Continue sharing your thinking, not just finished images. The more visible your creative process is, the clearer the authorship of your ideas becomes over time. You might also resist comparing individual works and instead look at the bigger picture. Careers are not judged on a handful of paintings or exhibitions. They’re judged on consistency, development and authenticity over many years. Audiences, curators and collectors tend to recognise who is genuinely pushing a practice forward and who is echoing someone else's.

Your greatest challenge isn’t protecting every idea – it's protecting your self-confidence. Keep making the work that only you can make. Let your practice continue to evolve instead of becoming a reaction to someone else’s. Originality isn’t a single painting or a particular motif; it’s the accumulation of thousands of creative decisions made over decades, and thousands of decisions that have come before you even started out.