Abstract Art

Hey everyone! I was really bent out of shape the other day (now I can’t even remember why) and I found that the only thing that made me feel better was painting. Now, I’m not one to sit in front of a canvas carefully picking out colors and painting perfect strokes when I’m angry, I just picked random colors and slapped them on a spare 11-by-14 canvas board I had. The result was this:

It’s a little wild. I literally grabbed tubes of paint at random. On some parts, you can see where I used my fingers to spread the paint around. I feel like painting abstract art is really liberating. I mean, you don’t have any set expectations of the painting itself (since you don’t have anything sketched out, nor do you have a reference photos to compare it to.) I also enjoy trying out new techniques when I abstract paint. It’s hard to tell because the orange, purple, green, black, and white are covering it, but I used a palette knife for the first time to smear on the yellow. It was quite fun, almost like buttering bread (but a lot more interesting :P)

Another thing about abstract art is that it’s up for interpretation. For example, to me, my painting represents anger, but also excitement (since I tried some new ways of painting while I was doing it,) but to another person, it may represent whimsy (because of all the colors) or some sort of internal struggle (because the cool colors on the left are clashing with the warmer colors on the right.)

One of my favorite abstract artist is Jackson Pollock (having first been introduced to his art around the age of eight when I read the book Olivia at my grandmother’s house.) This was the one in the Olivia book.

[image courtesy of http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/57.92/%5D

Autumn Rhythm (No. 30)- Jackson Pollock

Another Pollock work I really like is title Blue Poles.

Blue Poles (No. 11)- Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock preferred not to assign names to his works, only give them numbers. In 1954, the new title Blue Poles was first seen at an exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery and reportedly originated from Pollock himself.

[Info courtesy of http://www.jackson-pollock.org/blue-poles.jsp%5D

That’s all for now. What do you think of my abstract art? Who is your favorite abstract artist? Do you have a piece of abstract art you’d like to share with us? Have a name idea for my abstract? Tell us in the comments section and keep on the lookout for our next post. We’ll be having a guest writer…

~Elizabeth and Kathleen