An angel appeared

Angel , 5x7 oil on paper

The initial point of abstract art is that it is void of any recognizable shapes or items.  This is what made  Jackson Pollock so famous.  He eliminated everything but the color by dripping the paint onto the canvas.  For the time, this was the pinnacle of abstraction.  You have to understand that a simple brush stroke on a canvas is in fact a line, a recognizable element. Well, there's a lot of different theories you can study and learn more about Abstract Art in books, or online.  My way of thinking of abstraction is simple and I'm not here to say who's right and who's wrong?  Actually, the person who's right may be the person paying for the painting?

In my abstract art I am simply playing with color, texture and maybe a bit of form. Most of the recognizable elements in my art come from the scratching or doodling I do directly into the wet paint.  Often times the doodling is simple geometric shapes, other time they are simple icons, like a heart or a cross.  Everything I add to an abstract is there for the beauty and balance of the image but the individual elements do not necessarily tell a story or convey an idea.  In fact the titles have more information or may lead you into a certain direction more than the actual painting or doodles.

In my painting Angel, seen above, an angel appeared in the paint.  I thought it was interesting and so I kept her there.  I did touch her up a bit to make her a little more prominent, but not much.  I think I achieved balance in this painting when I added the little yellow dot near the top.  It almost appears as a moon or star.  I have noticed that when I make something recognizable (like the angel) other things take on related shapes (like the star) and our minds start to put conceived puzzle pieces together to try and make a story.  This is interesting to me because the Angel is just a blob of paint.  No story to be had.  The yellow dot was just a bit of warmth added to compliment the bottom warm colors.

Funny how things develop.

Larry