The Rules of Abstraction

It has been two months and a half since I started working from home.  Since I left all of my painting tools in the locker of the school, I cannot fully paint at this moment.  However, taking advantage of this limitation, I started doing small sketches, which brought me some surprises and discoveries.  In short, the quarantined life cause by COVID-19 was not as barren as I expected.

As a result, I ended up watching lots of Yotube videos. One of the best so far is this BBC documentary, titled "The Rules Of Abstraction With Matthew Collings." 

I am basically a representational artist, but learned a lot from this.  What I learned is that the objective of abstract art is not to explain it, but to engage people in the world it presents.  That is why some people find it difficult to "understand" abstract art.  But you don't have to understand it.  You just engage yourself in it, or just feel it.  That's the beauty of abstraction. Boy, this documentary changed the way I see the world (of abstraction).

The artist in the photo (Tess Jaray) stated: "the more evidence you have on the surface of the way it's done, the less you are going to understand or feel the intensity of the color."  I cannot agree more.