laskuvesi

acrylic on canvas

detail

vaikea helppo

As a little kid, I was drawn to abstract art on my first trip to the DIA. By the time I was in art school (next to the DIA), I was frustrated at my inability to produce abstract art. Later, I was envious of people who could create it.

All I really needed to do was to give myself permission. It really was that difficult easy. Seriously. It was easy difficult.

It wasn’t that I had to find something, it was in letting go of something.

I had the idea that art was supposed to look like something. The more a drawing or painting looked like the real thing, the more realistic or photographic it was, the better it was.

I thought that if I didn’t reference something tangible, people would wonder whether I could draw… or think that I couldn’t draw.

And yet I admired abstract images and wanted to make them.

I have a friend who is a singer/songwriter. She would sing songs by James Taylor, The Indigo Girls, etc. in coffee shops or restaurants, and people loved it.

Sometimes she would go to a more alternative club and perform more alternative, edgy music. I don’t know the actual words to describe it. She told me she did the coffee shop stuff to make money, and the darker, more raw stuff for herself.

That’s kind of what it’s like for me. I do like to do paintings of trees and animals, and people like to see them. But I do the abstracts for me. Those are journeys into color, shapes and textures that are expressions of feelings… nonverbal things. They are not bound by rules of perspective, shading or other components that may make a painting of an object right or wrong.

I’m not so unique, as I have said. So those more personal expressions will probably strike a chord in someone else.

Someone recently looked at one of my new abstract paintings and asked “am I supposed to see something here?”

I answered, “you’re supposed to see paint.”