Being abstract requires flexibility. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know how I’ve enjoyed the new ways in which I have been able to experiment with my art. I consider myself fortunate to enjoy painting both representationally and in an abstract manner.
Perhaps I am fickle and dabble too much to be taken seriously, but I when I think of creativity I think of wildly courageous ideas and crazy flexibility. I have often admired the great minds of artists and inventors that value flexible thinking.
Leonard Mlodinow, American theoretical physicist, screenwriter and author suggests carving out time for daydreaming, talking to people outside your social circle, absorbing great art out of your comfort zone, listening to ideas or concepts you actively disagree with before disregarding them.
One definition of abstract is having only intrinsic form with little or no attempt at pictorial representation or narrative content. Abstract paintings for me originate from within. I am by nature a planner and carefully think through a representational painting. I have to be more flexible with an abstract painting.
With an abstract painting, I have learned to listen acutely to myself and merge my own thoughts with the client’s desires, color proclivities and then enable myself to create apart from concrete realities and specific objects.
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Albert Einstein
There is a freedom that is unleashed when I paint this way, but it is based upon learning to love the journey and not the destination. Here you see the beginnings of the vision I had for this painting.
These next 2 pictures are close-ups of the canvas as I am starting to relate to the painting experimentally.
Here is how I saw the painting finished:
But here is how the client saw the painting! I love it that people see what they want to see in my abstract paintings, that it delights them in different ways, that their own imagination is participating in the creative process.
I love walking with God, He is ordered yet wild! If you don’t think so look at nature and read the Bible! God has gifted us with creativity and intuition that we are to use in glorifying Him.
Perhaps you find my process intriguing and would like to have an abstract developed for your home, if so contact me.
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