Finding the Painting
One of the things I’m enjoying most about working abstractly is beginning without knowing exactly where the painting will end up.
I usually have something to start with. It might be a limited palette I’ve been wanting to explore, a particular colour relationship, or simply the urge to put paint down and see what happens. But I’m trying not to design the finished painting in advance.
The first stage is deliberately loose. I put down colour, change the proportions, cover things, leave other areas almost untouched and allow shapes to appear without deciding too quickly what they mean.
There’s something I love about those early passes. They often contain awkward proportions, unexpected gaps, bits of white ground, strange little interruptions and combinations I probably wouldn’t have arrived at if I had planned them.
For a while, I thought the challenge of abstraction was knowing what to add. I’m beginning to think the more important skill might be knowing when to stop exploring and start looking.
After that first pass, I’ve been leaving the paintings where I can see them. Sometimes for a few hours, sometimes longer. Gradually, something begins to stand out. A shape feels more important than the others. Two colours begin to hold the painting together. A large pale area suddenly feels necessary. A small mark carries much more weight than I expected it to. That is usually the moment when I feel as though I’ve found the painting.
It isn’t finished, but it has revealed enough of itself for me to understand what I’m working with. From there, the process becomes much more deliberate. Instead of asking what else I can put into the painting, I’m asking what will make the relationships that are already there stronger.
Perhaps one edge needs clarifying. A shape might need to grow slightly. A colour may need to become quieter. Something might need scraping back so an earlier layer can reappear. Or perhaps the area I’m tempted to change is actually the part that needs protecting. That distinction has become really important to me.
The early stage needs freedom. If I start organising too soon, the painting can become predictable. But if I keep exploring indefinitely, I can just as easily paint over the thing that gave it life. Somewhere between those two states is the painting itself. I think this is why my slower approach has been so helpful lately.
Stopping gives me enough distance to see what has happened rather than immediately responding with another mark. The painting gets a chance to tell me what is already working. It also means I’m beginning to trust accidents more.
An accidental shape doesn’t necessarily need correcting simply because I wouldn’t have drawn it that way intentionally. A large area of untouched ground isn’t automatically unfinished. A line that stops awkwardly might be exactly what gives the composition tension. Not every good decision has to look deliberate.
Sometimes the most interesting part of a painting is the thing I couldn’t have planned. Of course, intuition isn’t the whole process. At some point I still have to edit. I have to decide what matters and what doesn’t. But I’m beginning to understand those two stages differently. The first pass is where I create possibilities. The looking is where I discover which possibility has life. And the later painting is where I try to strengthen it without losing what made me notice it in the first place.
Perhaps that’s why these paintings have started to feel less stressful too. I don’t have to begin with an answer. I can begin with curiosity.
The painting doesn’t need to exist in my head before I make it. I just need to create enough space for something unexpected to happen, and then pay attention when it does. More and more, that feels like the work. Not inventing the painting. Finding it.