In this episode of The Messy Studio Podcast, we offer insight into both appreciating and creating abstract art.While we know that abstraction is challenging for many people, itcan be seen as simply a different way of interpreting reality. Although there are unique aspects, abstraction in fact shares much in common with realism.
All art is a translation of some kind, beginning withsource ideas-things that are seen, thought, known,or felt. From there, the artist's intentions, personal filters, intuition and technique come into play. For some artists the sources and the end result are straightforward, realistic and identifiable. For others, the sources are less obvious. The visual world, intuition, emotion, ideas, pure visual elements, and the art process itself may all contribute to the end result.
The creative path is unique to every artist, but the goal is the same. How can the gap be bridged between the artist's intentions and the viewer's perception? All artists look to the same universal visual language of color, value, line, shape, form, texture, and the principles of design for their answers, and the possibilities inherent in these are infinite.
So what makes abstraction unique and challenging? Rather than replicating visual reality, abstract artists are synthesizers. They tend to pull from many sources, integrating and creating new realities. These sources may include the visual world, ideas, memories, poetry and music, and pure elements of color, line or shape. Given the sheer amount of source material, abstraction is not a narrow category, nor is it merely "making something out of nothing" as it is sometimes described.
A major challenge for an abstract artist is to determine their most meaningful sources and to communicate that meaning to others. For the viewer, appreciating abstraction requires shedding the natural human impulse to label and identify subject matter.Instead, the best approach is to experience the work as an immersion into a different visual world, onethat draws onfeelings, impressions, ideas, and associations.
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