“I can do that! Easy!” These were my thoughts the first time I, a self-taught artist, attempted an abstract painting. After that ill-fated attempt, I knew I was in trouble. To do something that looked so easy, but nearly impossible to pull off, humbled me and it drew a line in the sand I could not resist crossing. I found myself mesmerized and challenged – I will learn to create Abstracts! Abstract painting is a new language with a different alphabet; difficult to learn but it’s what makes abstracts beautiful and evocative for reasons I cannot put my finger on. They speak in a foreign language, a language closer to our skin and bones than is our native tongue. Abstracts run past our left-brain, plop a cannon-ball into our right-brain, getting us wet for no good reason, or make us want to immerse ourselves in moods and thoughts deep below surface waters. An abstract painting, oddly, is an expression of a human life. We are many selves with polyvalent desires and longings, constantly morphing, coming together, being deconstructed, but with enough internal cohesion to have a sense of self-identity. Look close enough, and you might recognize a friend – yourself, the world. I call my abstracts “inscapes”, inspired by these words of Thomas Merton: “Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals, new beginnings…All life tends to grow like this, in mystery inscaped with paradox and contradiction, yet centered, in its very heart, on the divine mercy.”
Abstracts
March 11, 2023
