Abstracts

This week I played a little with oils as I had no subject I wanted to paint. I thought perhaps doing abstracts would loosen up my landscapes. I have a lot of small canvases (Michael's had the packages of 10 on sale). Small seemed more promising than big. At least if they didn't work, I had less invested in them.

I started the first one by covering the surface with a bright orange. As my brush seemed to suggest water, the painting took off from being an abstract to a kind of fantasy sea. Well, at least the colors are abstracted. It is really hard for me to make a painting that doesn't end up being about something.

The second one, I decided to just lay in colors and then what the heck, lay in some more-- basically whatever pleased me. Between laying in the first colors, I thought maybe I'd find some ideas online for procedures by abstract painters.

The problem was I didn't like most of what I saw. A lot of abstracts just seemed to me like wall paper designs or something bright for behind the sofa. Not exactly what I had in mind but I got another idea for this one. What if I tried different techniques besides the painting. Scratching in some shapes, the feeling grew that this was a watery cave with supernatural light and symbols...

Maybe I just am not the type of person who can do non-objective paintings. Or maybe it'll take doing more.

Both paintings are oils on 8x10 stretched canvas.