2024
I'm often confronted with the concept of abstract art. Its success, rooted in free-form interpretation, confounds me. While I understand its application, the ability of abstract art to captivate, despite straying from artistic conventions and principles, leaves me questioning my art education—and, more so, the need for convention in artistic comprehension.
Does abstract art truly hold universal intrigue, or is it simply a low-stakes investment aligned with the times? Art is subjective, so who’s to say what’s worth one’s time? Yet, I find myself both fascinated and fatigued by thoughts of my success—or lack thereof—with and without abstraction. As an artist who cut their teeth on realism and surrealism, the leap to abstraction isn’t foreign. Still, my ventures into this space feel inauthentic.
Freely creating from feeling—memories of objects in the real world, interpreted through a mosaic of colors and shapes—feels like drifting far from what I once recognized as my artistic self. It’s like being set adrift in unfamiliar waters, lured by the prospect of new opportunities.