Thoughts on Abstract Art
Abstract art always kind of intimidated me. I didn’t get it, but I felt like I should get it. It looks so simple, what am I missing? Some people LOVE abstract art. What’s up with that? I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of someone actually enjoying looking at abstract art. I have a degree in art history, and let me tell ya, learning about who made abstract art didn’t make me like abstract art any bit more.
Lately, I had been having this thought pop in my head about letting go of control. Not just with painting, but painting sure is a good metaphor for everything else so we will focus on that. To set the tone I feel like it’s first important to review (maybe condense is a better word) my previous year and why that thought of letting go of control was showing up in my paintings.
It was this time last year where I was hitting the end of my rope in my last job (an art teacher at a Pre-K through 8th grade school) so I started really relying on my painting as a way to brain drain and get my mind off work. I started my bar series and I was getting sucked into every detail; not thinking about what I was painting, but just painting the shapes and colors I saw and letting it be an automatic motion. Interesting to me, was that when I finished those paintings, instead of them being as loose as I thought they were while I was painting, I realized they were quite realistic. After I finished the last one in that series I found myself wanting to lean into the idea of painting shapes and colors and being looser. I wanted to capture something but not feel the restriction of being so exact.
Over Yonder, the first bar painting that I completed last year (available)
I started using a flat square brush for everything. I thought if I can’t tell my brain to stop making things exact, I will handicap myself with my tools so I have no choice but to be loose. And wouldn’t you know it, that darn brain of mine adapted, got used to working with a clunky brush, started to really refine things without needing a bunch of fancy tools. Well son of a gun, I am not going to sit here and be outplayed by my own brain. I wanted to make paintings that were free of control and I wasn’t going to let my brain tell me any different. So I told myself, I said, “Adrienne, let go of the need to paint from references. Just paint something and let it be whatever it is.”
Well, I don’t know if you ever sat down and tried to just paint whatever, but it is not as easy as it sounds. My first attempts I couldn’t help making them into things. This one a body, this one a plant, but that’s not really getting the point, is it? If I want to let go of control in a painting, the painting can’t look like something or else that darn brain of mine is going to start telling my hand that I am drawing a horse and before you know it I no longer have a painting of whatever, I have a painting of a horse. And let me tell ya, I can paint a horse just fine thank you, but what am I saying with that painting of the horse that the horse hasn’t already said herself? So, I realized I needed to let go of even more control. I needed to try non-objective art.
“Connect” acrylic on 12x20” canvas. An attempt earlier this year of letting go of using references (available)
Now, I was an art teacher for two years and I sure did enjoy doing abstract art with them kiddos. The younger the better- no preconceived notions yet of how things are “supposed” to look and pure unadulterated enjoyment of putting color on paper. They made it look easy. The lesson was actually pretty simple and I am surprised it took me so long to learn from it but if you are interested in the run down to apply to your own practice here it is:
Step one: Explain abstract art (they didn’t have to know that I didn’t know what I was talking about all they had to know was abstract art could be whatever)
Step two: show them how to use the materials and explain all the reasons why eating them or putting them on your clothes or someone else’s clothes was a bad idea
Step three: give them as many pieces of paper as they want and let them do whatever they want
Sure there was a bit more conversation there but in reality it was also really that simple- give kids art supplies and they will make whatever, why couldn’t I?
Student work from my second year teaching, first grade is the top two rows of work with kindergarten below
I sat down this afternoon and decided I was going to try to hammer it out. Get to the bottom of why I wasn’t understanding abstract art and I believe the best way to understand something is to give it a try. I laid out some materials for myself, reviewed why I shouldn’t eat them and then told myself I could use as much paper as I wanted. I ended up creating three paintings with the prompt “create something you like looking at, but doesn’t mean anything”. I feel like the struggle can be seen as a progression through these three paintings.
With the first painting, every mark I made reminded me of something. That mark looked like a petal but I didn’t want to make petals. The whole painting became a puzzle of how can I change it so that mark didn’t remind me of a petal anymore. The problem compounded because I just kept wanting to make it look like something I could label. It was no longer a petal but it was becoming a part of a pattern and that pattern was something I could label so how can I make it look less like a pattern. I finally forced myself to step away.
For the second painting I decided that maybe the best approach would be to make a random mark and then puzzle out how I could reconcile the mark into something I enjoyed looking at. The problem was, I didn’t like the initial mark and while giving up control was achieved with the initial mark, I knew that my fundamental issue with abstract art was that I generally don’t like looking at it so while I don’t want to be really controlling with what I make, I still need to like it.
For the third painting, before I began I evaluated the first two paintings and analyzed what I liked about them. What shapes did I gravitate to, what marks did I like painting best? I took those things and guided myself to only do marks I really enjoyed painting and I applied them to the third painting and in what should be no surprise, this third painting is the painting I like looking at the most. It doesn’t have any meaning, I just like looking at it.
I’ll be honest, I still don’t know if I understand abstract art but I feel a lot more comfortable with it now and if you are also abstract curious like I am, I encourage you to give it a try for yourself. Challenge yourself to paint or draw something that you enjoy looking at but isn’t tied to any ideas or recognizable forms. I am curious to see if this is an idea that will eventually trickle into more of my work. I want it to, but I haven’t puzzled that part out just yet.
