is different from the kind of thinking needed when painting something using a reference, (reference meaning a photo or from life, like a still-life vase of flowers, or actual person sitting, kind-of-thing).
I’m mostly interested in painting things, and I always use a reference for them - faces, portraits, animals, people, flowers, jars, even the occasional tree, landscape… and I get a likeness by observing the tones, the light areas and dark areas, of whatever it is I’m looking at.
Although my representational paintings are always semi-abstracted, sometimes even quite unearthly looking, they are still things that I’m representing with as much likeness to the reference that I can create by observing the light and dark shapes of tone in the reference I’m using, but at the same time allowing outrageous freedom to deviate in my colour choices, mark making, and composition.
So, when breaking down the process to just paint marks, colour and composition with no representation of anything, I’ve got one less thing to hold on to and it’s like walking backwards, or walking with eyes closed or… humming a song without words…no…not even that…maybe more like singing words to represent the tune of a music piece that hasn’t got any words - like Beethoven’s famous Fur Elise - try singing that tune using made up words off of the top of your head- and record yourself singing it then write those spontaneous words down in reverse, refine it so it rhymes in places, replace every 10th word with a new word, and put some punctuation in after that word only, and a semi-colon after every 10th word, then sing it to the tune of Fur Elise but in an entirely different key and that’s your painting - conceptually speaking.
That’s what it feels like to me creating abstract.
What you come up with, in the spur of the moment, is quite bizarre and often hideous and needs refining and refining until you have something visually pleasing that stands on it’s own as a work of visual poetry, something that’s more about the words themselves than a story they might tell.
It doesn’t make sense at first impression, but there’s method to the process and the method makes sense, so in the end what you see is a description of the method, not the description of a literal thing like a tree or animal…I think.
This first layer of my abstract is hideous, but just chucking something down with whatever’s in reach without thinking is the reference for the next part of the painting, and so on snd so on until it’s completed.
I don’t love it but I don’t mind the completed work - so what did I learn?
It takes layers to get enough variety for an interesting painting.
There’s more interest when things aren’t perfect - like messy edges, and muddled scribbles look good next to cleanly painted shapes.
One abstract isn’t enough, I’ve got 3 more on the go and I played around with this next one on the kitchen table after dinner.
Letting the paint dry between layers is necessary for abstract because without a reference the underpainting layers more often than not need to be drastically changed.
Cropping the abstract and framing it looks pleasing to me, but I’m not confident that it’ll please anyone else. It’s much harder to self critique your own work if there’s no reference to refer to.
It’s so much fun and the possibilities are endless.
Making abstract art you can defy all and every rule, so it gives an opportunity to explore and play with materials, concepts, ideas, and use up any leftover paint and bits and pieces lying around making it a process for recycling.
Try it.
