Since returning from Houston's Fotofest I've been ruminating on the meaning of artistic expression and the following quote sent me in a good direction.

"A literary signature would be the visible shorthand for a literary person; a style would be a more complex but still legible trace of that person's interaction with the world. Writers usually have more signature than style, I think. Signature is their habit and their practice, their mark; style is something more secretive, more thoroughly dispersed among the words, a reflection of luck or grace, or of a moment when signature overcomes or forgets itself."

Michael Wood, The Magician's Doubts: Nabakov and the Risks of Fiction