While I have been making art for a long time, it has only been in the last few years that I have gotten more and more into abstract painting. It has crept up on me, this abstract work. Someone recently told me they saw my paintings online, and they didn’t get it. “Not getting” abstract art is a pretty common thought. Why would an artist paint abstractly if they have the ability to work more realistically? (I used to assume that if someone was an abstract artist it was because they couldn’t draw!) I know the style isn’t for everyone, but I know that at this time in my life it is for me. Here are a few reasons why:
I’m drawn to it. When I scroll through Pinterest or Instagram, I seem to always slow down when I see an abstract piece of art. I want to study it: the colors, the layers, the shapes, the feeling. I love a large piece of abstract art, how it fits boldly in a room. If I’m in a gallery or space that has abstract art in it I want to stand with my nose in it! I just really love looking at it.
It’s challenging. Before I had even dipped a toe into the water of abstract painting I sat up on my high horse of more realistic work and thought: “Abstract art is so easy. Anyone could do it.” Now, of course, I am off the horse trying to make my own abstract work and hello, it is hard. Abstract work is art boiled down to its very simplest forms. Shapes, colors, values. When something looks easy, more than likely it isn’t! Even if an abstract piece is drawing inspiration from life (like paintings in my farm abstract series) it still has to be able to stand on its own without a more obvious subject to support it.
Abstract art makes me feel free. This is probably my favorite thing about abstract art. It is so freeing! To look at, to make. When I first started making paintings that were non-subjective I just called them geometric paintings: I used watercolor to make repeating patterns of triangles. Lots and lots of triangles. I think I started making these triangle paintings just to test colors, but I loved the process to much I kept making more. Something about that repetitive work calmed my mind, which tends to run a little on the anxious side. This was the first time I think I made art for the process rather than the product. This has opened up a whole side of art making that I honestly never considered before. Free indeed!