A Few Abstract Thoughts

I am a bit ticked off today. I had a series of drawings planned and it hasn't worked out, or at least hasn't worked out as I planned. Rethink. Redo. Ticked off. (Don't get me wrong. I am still mad as hell about Tony Abbott and the Budget. That's not going to change. But with the drawings I am ticked off - which is a nicer feeling).

So instead of dealing with my immediate minor fail, I'll obsess over my major fail - abstractionism. In the years I spent at the Charlie Sheard Studio School this was the one thing at which I comprehensively failed. The course covered C15th-C19th oil techniques, but we also had an abstraction component (Charlie is one of this country's great abstractionists) and it cut me completely adrift. I struggled with it and repeatedly lost. It would reduce me to tears in the night. In class I would feel like I was drowning. There is suffering for your art and then there is just sheer frustration and bewilderment. I was not alone. There was one other student also struggling. We would sit together at lunch and agonise over the afternoon of painting to come and would compare our levels of panic and dread. In hindsight that probably wasn't very helpful. (We both nailed layered glaze and sfumato in our Leonardo da Vinci exercises, so I suppose that's something).

Even after all this time, abstractionism is still my real stumbling block, the form I struggle with and am regularly defeated by. It is really, REALLY difficult. Alright, yes, anyone can splash some paint around and call it abstract, and to a certain extent that works. But I am talking about GOOD abstract painting. And GOOD abstract painting is hard to achieve.

No.11, 1952 (Blue Poles), by Jackson Pollock, oil, enamel, aluminium paint, glass on canvas 212.1 h x 488.9 w cm
Purchased 1973 Accession No: NGA 74.264 © Pollock-Krasner Foundation/ARS. Licensed by Viscopy. Okay, it seems a bit of a cliche, but go and look at the real thing in the NGA in Canberra. It is a revelation. No image does it justice.

Walk into the AGNSW, the NGA, the MCA, MoMA or anywhere and you can see modern abstractionism ranging from the great to the utterly puerile (for the record, I consider Pollock one of the greats - I know, I know, I am such a herd animal). There are works on display that cause unexplained emotions as you stand before them, and there are others that simply give rise to derision. Quite a lot of abstract, and for that matter modern, art is really just bull artistry - the application of a clever explanation and some vague attempt to shock or be outrageous or simply odd. As viewers of art I think we all have it within us to sort the genuine from the dross.

Piece of advice, people, trust your instincts. You know what you like and what you respond to. If "clever" people start saying "oh, no, you're wrong, you don't know enough" just remember the emperor's new clothes. And if a work requires a written explanation before it evokes any response then it has failed and you shouldn't feel bad about saying "what a piece of crap". Art is subjective. Don't let others tell you what to think.

Then there are the artworks that are really good, moving, emotive, that fire your imagination and your soul. And are fading. Or flaking. Or cracking. Those ones make me want to cry. And you can see these in just about any gallery anywhere in the world. Here are artists who are producing amazing pieces, but they have no or little technical training and their paintings are not stable. What a pointless waste. If you are creating a thing of beauty make it last. Make the effort to understand your materials and make them work for you. On the upside, just about all the crap abstractionists have no idea of technique either, so their works will eventually vanish, unmourned and unloved.

I will never be great, but I do not want to be puerile. And while I have the technical ability to produce paintings that could survive centuries, my attempts at abstract to this point have not deserved to be loved.

So what's my creative problem with abstracts? I am very figurative in my work. My brain likes things to look like things. I am one of those people who looks at patterns, or swirls, or grain in woodwork and sees faces or creatures. It used to scare the crap out of me as a child. For instance, we had a large, old wardrobe in our bedroom and there was a dark knot on one of the door panels. At night I would lie in bed and stare at that knot in terror, because it looked for all the world like an angry face with a great, gaping maw. My sister couldn't see the face, no matter how many times I pointed it out (it occurs to me - perhaps I am just mad. Oh well). Maybe it's just as well she couldn't see it. Otherwise there would have been two of us lying there in the dark looking at this thing, unable to sleep.

And why should I care about abstractionism? Because there is no actual "thing" in an abstract painting there is nothing to distract you from technique, from colour, from materials. It is a very pure form of painting. Perhaps that is why it so easily separates the sheep from the goats (terrible phrase - I like sheep AND goats, but you get the meaning). Here is a perfect way to examine how colours work with and against each other. Here is a perfect way to explore the amazing effects you can get with just pigment and oil, how different types of brush stroke can change things completely. And I hate being defeated by anything. For me abstractionism is the great challenge.

Now here is the weird thing. I have started three, THREE, abstract paintings. Purely abstract. Voluntarily. For the first time there is nothing in them that I can see, nothing I can point to and say "Oh, that looks like X". It will be a slow process. I work in layers (I can see the need for a post on process). And I may yet turn them to the wall and never look at them again. But for some unknown reason I WANT to produce some abstracts and I am EXCITED by the thought. There is no dread, no panic, no bewilderment. What is going on?

I've included Abney Park's "Evil Man" just because I am still and always will be angry with Tony Abbott and because I like the song. So there.