How I became an abstract expressionist painter

When I was a child, I always colored carefully in my coloring books, never straying outside the lines.  When I began to draw and paint, I tried to copy nature, but first I copied what other artists had drawn and painted.

My goal was to draw what was really there, to achieve a “likeness” that people would recognize.  In high school, my art teacher praised me for achieving such results.  This annoyed Bernie, another art student, who claimed that his abstract design was more original than my landscape painting. 

A young artist can learn a lot from copying the work of other artists, and from developing the skill to represent a messy three-dimensional life form in two dimensions on a flat piece of paper.  I enjoyed developing those skills.

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When did my art begin to turn away from reality?  Never.  I found a deeper, more ecstatic reality in the heightened interplay of color and form found in the work of the abstract expressionists.

To make such marks on canvas myself became a deep path to discovery—a visual falling in love.  I have never looked back.

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On the canvas in front of me, anything and everything is possible.  It begins with one brushstroke—any brushstroke, line or smear of color.  All follows from the first mark.

Is this ultimate freedom?

No.  Every art form is made within a structure—the grammar of a sentence, the notes of a chord, the colors on a color wheel.  We weave patterns in a quilt, form shapes with our limbs in a dance.

It is all abstract and all real at the same time.  We learn it as we go, and the deeper we go, the more we can experience.

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Recognition makes us feel comfortable and safe:  “I’ve seen this before.  I understand it.  It speaks to me in my language.  It is of my culture.  It is good.”

Abstract expressionist painting is not about total freedom, no rules, and anything goes.  It is about process and discovery.  It is about trusting your knowledge and years of experience to carry you to a different place—one you haven’t seen before.

You hope, when you get there, that it will speak to you.