Mary’s Landscape Art Info

Michael Albala continues.  Abstraction is not a quantifiable skill like drawing, value relationships or compositional principles.  It involves those principles, but it is also guided by one’s artistic personality.  Some artists instinctively see the world in abstract terms while others prefer concrete representation.  There is no right or wrong, good or bad choice, but here are some pointers to push your work toward abstraction.

1)  Focus on an aesthetic.  If abstraction places more emphasis on aesthetics such as value, color, pattern, shape and brushwork than it does on the subject, then making one of these aesthetics the “subject” can move the painting toward abstraction.  2)  Apply ultra-limited focus.  Landscape painters must always limit their focus to a smaller slice of the scene than is actually visible to them.  As the painter continues this process, through an ultra-limited focus, an entirely different world can emerge.  “It’s always about the painting as opposed to a literal depiction of place and objects,” says abstract painter Kathleen Earthrowls.