Energy Diptych

My work is mainly realist. Even when painting fantastic or futuristic themes I am rendering objects to be familiar in some way to what we see and can read as objects, rather than making purely abstract or expressive marks. That isn’t to say that I think abstraction is not art. I just do prefer more realistic images.

Abstraction is a difficult subject, especially today. Most people have never really embraced or understood abstract art. There are still a lot of jokes about three year old kids being able to do what Jackson Pollock did. This is made even harder to defend today with every housewife creating poured acrylic abstracts and a variety of other techniques that amateurs are flocking to as easy ways to create something that is colorful, decorative and seem to them to be the same as the highly intellectualized abstracts done by very famous artists since the 1960s. They fail to understand that the simple pourings created in 15 minutes are not the same as what Pollock did or what Richter is doing today. The great abstract artists spend a lot more time engaged in a push-pull with the painting until it gets to a point where they are satisfied with it. Yes, they use some accidental techniques, but their paintings are not accidental.

These two paintings were a class project at MIAD. We were told to create a diptych where the two paintings “talk” to each other, so your eye keeps going back and forth between them. When this assignment was given I was skeptical. I pushed ahead anyway since I had to as part of my class grade. I set the two canvas boards next to each other and started putting paint on them both. I did not have an idea of what I wanted to end up with. I just let them happen. During the course of this the paintings did seem to tell me what I should do next and they did start to “talk” to each other. I ended this assignment convinced that it wasn’t just art speak, that it really does work. Of course it is only something happening in our subconscious mind as we do the work, but it is true nonetheless. These two paintings seem to me to capture different forms of energy. One of them seems more free and unconstrained energy, while the other seems to have the energy and forces blocking each other like in a collision.

I still prefer realism, but this assignment gave me a respect for abstract art that I didn’t have before then.