A common question I get asked by visitors to my studio: they pause in front of an ‘abstract’ and ask ‘What’s it meant to be?’
Interestingly, it’s adults who ask, not children. Children tell you what they see. They don’t ask what it’s meant to be, they tell you what it is.
But adults want to know what the picture ‘represents’.
It’s not a question I can answer.
When I make a picture, it is what it is. It is not a ‘code’ for something else.
I see things in what emerges, just as I see things in the clouds, or hear fragments of music in the wind and waves. That’s my business.
It’s not my business - or interest - to tell you what you should see, imagine or think about when you meet one of my paintings.
Your business is your business.
I think the problem is with the word ‘abstract’.
I was watching a film about the artist @henzward Henry Ward on the @jacksons_art Jackson’s Podcast/Blog. He pointed out that the word ‘abstract’ implies an abstraction FROM something - that abstract art references some non-abstract ‘reality’. He thinks of his paintings not as abstract, but as ‘non-representational’.
This really resonated for me.
My ‘abstracts’ do not represent anything - they simply are.
They are rock and mineral.
They are plant pigment.
They are the fruit of manual labour.
They are shape.
They are relationship.
They are flow.
They might provoke, evoke or suggest.
They might remind or refresh.
But they are not a representation of something else.
They are what they are, as a rock or the sound of a bird overhead are what they are, and none the worse for that.