Rational

I decided to create an abstract painting of two figs after some brainstorming, sketching and reworking. Figs felt like a meaningful subject to me, reminding me of my childhood in my Abuela’s backyard. I wanted the unique and vibrant colours of the fruit to instill the feelings of nostalgia, warmth and childhood, worry free bliss. To achieve these I ended up exploring an expressive painting style focusing on impasto and using thick brushstrokes along with palette knife strokes, adding depth. I was inspired by Van Gogh’s thick brushstroke technique and Trish Schwartz’s landscape piece showcased in this week’s powerpoint, Abstraction in painting slide 25. These proved to me the dimension and texture the style works to achieve which was exactly what I was striving for in portraying the fruit’s juicy and playful appeal. This revealed to me that simplifying forms using abstract shading can capture the feelings within a visual representation. I realized that this process is a lot about how you interpret the colours and details within an object using composition, contrast, colour and texture as these two painters did utilizing expressive brushstrokes in an engaging, thought provoking way. Van Gogh’s work clearly communicates emotion and movement with these strategies which is something I wanted to experiment with in a magnified way. I incorporated various image development strategies, magnification, elaboration and even embellishment to push the abilities of pattern, texture and ornamentation within one abstract piece. I found success in using patterns of brushstokes and layering within this process to amplify feeling and visual contrast. However, the approach of combining image development strategies challenged my perception of what may be overwhelming to the viewer which I realized when mixing the splatter technique with bead embellishments. At this stage I would next time consider using one on the background, or outside visual and then the other technique on the inside to differentiate and guide the viewer’s eye to the difference in detail. I would also practice further techniques with the sponge technique to soften harder edges in this process and amplify texture here.

Final abstract painting

Exercises on abstraction & composition sketches

Process Photos