Driven to Abstraction

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

I have been a representational painter for more than forty years now, and one thing that has become clear to me is this profound truth: whether representational or not, every painting of nature is an abstraction. What I mean by that is that any picture we might make is, by definition, not the thing itself, but a symbol, or suggestion of the thing. And if that is the case, the doors are wide open to push the abstraction as far as we think we can and still call it nature. This opens up a limitless field of inquiry and exploration for artists. The challenge in this kind of abstraction is to be able to evoke that flash of recognition in the audience. We want them to see the original reference at the same time they see the creative re-presentation of the subject by the artist. Through art, we can share a different way of seeing the world we all think we know so well.

One can also train the eye to find ready-made abstraction in nature. We can then find these compositions everywhere around…