Vignettes from Art and Life: 5. Abstraction

I’m bored of waking up with an unfinishable to-do list and a little tired of the same tree-less view outside my window. I’m also scared. 

Scared when reading the news and seeing atrocities that words have run out for a long time ago. Terrified of unimaginable disasters reaching my family and the possibility of war. I would desperately miss my domestic boredom then, so I dive in to reach gratitude.

I’m indescribably grateful for the ability to see and write, for being able to hear my son taste new words every day and for a supportive family in all phases of life.

I’m hungry for new experiences, content lying on the grass in my garden and anxious about the climate. Furious about government decisions and the ants that have invaded the lawn. Patient when “dinner’s ready!” but the episode of Sesame Street isn’t quite finished. Impatient when enlisting my son’s help to tidy up toys. Irrationally rushed when trying to leave the house to buy milk and leisurely when biting into a raspberry-chocolate ice cream.

It’s a tame snapshot of conflicting and privileged experiences that can somehow coexist even if one often overshadows the other. Tame or not though, the demons that come with access to endless information, stories and documentation streams cannot easily be exorcised. 

This sense of high alert is most easily broken when I’m faced with something I can’t quickly understand - that's where abstraction comes in. When it’s good, it’s really good. Like a juicy slap in the face, a breath of freezing cold air and a jump over a sprinkler all at once. 

Abstraction is a new love of mine. It comes, of course, in many forms, from collage to carved stone but it’s good old abstract painting that I have a soft spot for. 

I regularly dismissed it in the past, usually focusing on the colours and quickly moving on once I decided whether or not ‘I liked it’. Today it fills the void that sometimes appears between things happening and my comprehension of, or feelings, towards them. These are usually global events so beyond our understanding that disbelief is the thin barrier that prevents a breakdown. Other times, it’s the sense of losing time and youth. Helplessness in all its forms. Sometimes, it’s just the apathy of familiarity.

Abstraction works as either a neutral escape into a world that doesn’t make sense in a more pleasant way than reality, or an expression of something that cannot fit into words or legible lines, therefore becoming the only acceptable way to encounter it.

This has already happened before, when the Abstract Expressionists blossomed after the terrors of WWII and traditional image-making no longer made sense. Perhaps we’re reaching a similar sense of human irrationality, or maybe it’s just my own overwhelmed nervous system. 

There is so, so, so much to look at. Joan Mitchell’s unbelievable colours communicate more energy than a high-resolution NASA photograph of the sun. Mark Rothko’s coloured rectangles hold fleeting light and indescribable darkness. Jade Fadojutimi’s thick lines seem to describe a thing, and just as you’re about to realise exactly what it is, the image morphs into the next illusion. Nikolas Antoniou’s landscape-ish compositions with neon underpainting feel quietly laden with theory and, of course, Cy Twombly’s scribbled gardens are often places to happily get lost in.

I have a newly carved out space for artwork that continues to piss off the people who say their kids would do it better. I respect the artists’ dedication to their craft - I have never believed in anything so wholly, given myself to one medium or cause so completely, much less something that’s such a trap to contextualise or explain. 

Abstraction brings comfort in confusion. I'd much rather be disoriented by Antoni Tàpies’ composition of scratchy shapes than nauseated by the cesspit of social media comments.