Like Someplace I’ve Been Before
Abstracts… the area in between familiar and unfamiliar space. It’s that place that conjures dreams that you just can’t quite remember. Déjà vu and premonitions could happen here. A space that is familiar enough to make you start thinking, but not so familiar as to let you off the hook. If you’re going to think here, you’re going to have to struggle through to the answers, if there are any.
Maybe that’s why so many people, myself included, find abstracts difficult. Because for me, perhaps more than any other style of art, the story in abstract art is more dreamlike and less narrative. It either grabs you out of the gate or it doesn’t. Maybe abstract art is more about the story that YOU (the viewer) bring to it.
When I finished this one, the little artist’s voice in my head said “It’s done!” but my logical, left-brained side spoke up and said “It can’t be done! Where are the shapes? Where is the pattern? There is nothing here!”
But through this process I have learned to let the little artist’s voice be louder. And I have also discovered that for me, all my paintings start as an image, as daring colour splotches while the story and thinking come after.