Feb 15, 2025

Why Abstract Art?

In 2024, I started to explore making abstract art - I think because I was reading the book "Ninth Street Women" and learning about the abstract expressionist movement in NYC in the 40's and 50's, it was a concept I wanted to try my hand at. It looked fun, and after all, how hard could it be?

Answer: harder than I expected. But why?

The thing about abstract art is that there is nothing to guide you: you are creating something that never existed before and has never been seen before by anyone. There are no reference photos to use, nothing to give you an idea or indication if you're on the right track with what you're creating. It's non-representational, so who's to say if it looks like how it should?

Abstract art is the ultimate creative expression. That freedom to create something from absolutely nothing is daunting.

And exciting at the same time.

Some of my initial attempts at creating abstract art were, well, not that great. Even thought it's non-representational, there are still elements of art, the building blocks of making a good painting, that need to be followed in abstract painting: composition, line, values, rhythm, color selection, etc.

I plodded my way through several studies and the frustration began to subside as I started to let go of expectations and just view each piece as pure play. The above watercolor painting, "Anticipation," was a great introductory experiment in exploring the different textures and movement I could make with a single color and mark-making tools other than just a brush.

Right now I'm finishing up a 6-week course on abstract painting through Rhode Island School of Design and have been really enjoying the class and generating new ideas for future paintings. The above photo is an exercise from our first week, using a single dark color to create notans, a Japanese design concept of looking at light and dark values in a composition. Some of these exploratory notans could be the basis for paintings in the future.

I'm also excited to announce that I will have one of my abstract paintings published in an upcoming issue of Art & Color 365 magazine! I can't wait to share more once the issue is out.

Abstract art is truly one-of-a-kind: it's impossible to recreate or copy a painting, trying to get the same layers and brush stroke effects. That's what makes collecting abstract art exciting! You can explore more of my abstract work in my online gallery.