Totally Simplified

The Simplified Landscape #2

 6x8 in oil on canvas board  100

Continuing my quest of personal discovery towards abstract art.

This one was painted intuitively, using my painting memories from the previous
day's sunset landscape.

Symbols:
I took the yelow colors of a sunset, a blue horizontal line for
mountains or horizon and placed a dark shape for something growing. The layering
and overlapping visually creates perspective even though they are flat forms.

To me it is still obviously a landscape, but if I turned it like this...

... then it becomes a true abstract.


It is our ability to recognize symbols as "things" which makes our imagination fill in for us. If we tend towards enjoying realism then we will be  the type who sees faces, animals etc in the clouds.

I cropped a different area out of the same painting
and turned it upside down.

In a realistic landscape, the eye is not always comfortable with a dark top and much lighter bottom.
Is your eye comfortable with a dark top in an abstract?

Or does it prefer a lighter top area?

I find as soon as I have the lighter area at the top it became a landscape again..a drunken view maybe?










This has been a good exercise for me.  Especially after I worked on the emotionally engrossing series of my mothers pottery.

A lot of how I paint is recognizing what brings me the most pleasure and aiming for it.
I live in a world full of objects and each object has a shape or form. House, car, apple...
I love to render what I see so I would never want to be a totally non-representational painter.
Back in the day... I did for a while and found it did not hold my attention, but I do enjoy
looking at abstract art. My taste is so varied. Take a gander at this list.
Picasso, Motherwell, Vermeer, Turner, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Klee, Rothko,Twachtmann.
And many, many others.

If this your first visit because of the Liebster Blog award, please take the time to scroll back a few
days to see my regular work. Thank you.