I’ve been working on my abstract paintings, entitled Meditations On A Mountain, for a couple of years now. My idea was similar to that of a jazz musician who picks the same tune every night and plays it differently. Likewise I wanted to explore the different styles and possibilities available to me based on the reversible outline of a mountain range.
Separately, I disliked acrylics because the finished paintings looked as dull as dead fish, unlike the resonance oils gave a painting. But then I discovered there were organic acrylics that resembled oils when dry. Also heavy gel acrylics retained their resonance even if not organic.
So, as I experimented with my mountain motif I turned to acrylics, which turned out to be excellent for color fields. However, a word of warning; you need to varnish acrylic paintings as they damage very easily. I use a matt varnish as I dislike intensely the glass like veneer of the gloss varnish, which many painters use to get over the dullness inherent to mineral based acrylic pigments.
Another development that happened as I experimented was that instead of lines, the geometric shapes – rectangles, squares, etc. – I had begun to use to balance the amorphous shapes I created with my mountain motif became predominant. This enabled me to introduce expressive brush strokes for emotional effect rather than the arrangement and colour of the shapes and lines. And in turn that has enabled me to re-introduce representational elements into my abstracts.
Do I want to continue with this last development? I don’t know, because as the painting below shows it’s too easy to slip into surrealism.
The version at the very top is straightforward – colour fields and irregular lines. As soon as I introduced representational contrasts, however, it became surreal.
See for yourself:
Because the mountain motif I’ve been using is an outline, it has lent itself much better to evoking a memory and thus a feeling than the above image:
There is a purple line at the bottom of this, which is not clear despite RAW photography; it balances the image. You will see it when you click on the pic and it enlarges.
Anyway, clearly I’m at a crossroads in my abstract painting.