I have been looking at a lot of abstract art lately. This kind of work used to absolutely annoy me. It seemed an excuse not to work on anything that has form. Many artists see the modern art period as detrimental to art history feeling it has made artists and audience lazy. I like a lot of it now that my hyper critical stance about art has sort of settled down and now see that whether something is art or whether someone connects to it is purely subjective. I also realized I was creating some of it myself in my paintings without really realizing it. I did see some stupid comment on an abstract artist’s website stating that "Art that has to be explained has failed." That was the last line under his explanation of abstract art under the title ‘An explanation of abstract art’. There are times I feel that many artists do ‘folk’ art or ‘abstract art’ kind of as a way to avoid anything hard or anything that takes work. I have seen a lot of artist’s statements ..a lot…..at several galleries recently that basically say ‘I am not interested is technique but in the emotion or primitive effect, in my instinctual interpretation…….’. And I am sure some of them are being truthful and this is valid but this way of "working’ seems to be more and more common.
For me, the abstract or impressionistic paintings I do are a ‘break’ so to speak from my more representation work that I really put a lot of thought and sweat (sometimes blood) into. Its fun time. And I find that when I am creating these paintings that abstract images continually come into my mind when I am NOT working, most strongly at night when I am going to sleep. Colors in layers and in drips and strokes naturally flicker in my mind like photos. Weird. But it really shows the strong, strong effect that pure color has on the mind and soul. I think that accounts for the huge popularity of abstract art forms. I have read the myriad of definitions of what abstract art is. I still don’t get it.
