After years of painting I can confidently attest to the fact that producing art is a lot like being an athlete. It requires dedication, thorough technique, discipline and experimentation. Although its hard to say which component is more important, the experimenting part is definitely vital if you want to keep on growing.
For me, painting has always been a way to articulate the world around me and this is the case for most figurative "realist" artists. There are numbers of ways to do so; drawing and painting from observation, taking photos, record videos. Any of these methods serve as a vehicles to capture and articulated the outside world we see with our eyes, but how to grasp and capture what goes on inside ourselves? This is something I had no previous experience with and never dared to try. It was always a mystery to figure out how artists like Willem De Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler or Pollock, could just go ahead and do it without any particular plan in mind.
Painting is quite controversial in its nature, on a one hand it is a cerebral activity, where steps are calculated and thought through. On the other hand, its is quite primal and a very intuitive process, where decisions are made impetuously, without second thoughts.
The challenge and pleasure of painting the ‘inside world’ is that you can focus primarily on the primal and let go of the cerebral aspect of the process. Since no one can see what is it that you are painting there is no right or wrong, it is merely a question of ‘feels right or doesn't’. This is quite liberating because it allows one to focus primarily on the physical process and the pleasure that come with making marks on the canvas without worrying too much about getting a well articulated result that can be judged and evaluated based on some kind of standard. As a result of focusing entirely on the process, something that I refer to as ‘lucky accidents’ sometime happen. This lucky accidents than turn out to be little masterpieces, that no one had planed or anticipated. It appears that the only way to create something truly original and innovative is to do so by accident. Ironically, a piece of art that is a result of an accident is a lot more powerful and effective because it cannot be replicated repeated or explained. It was ‘invented’, ‘discovered' by the artist as a result of series of accidents, making it somehow a lot more precious and sublime.
Below is a story of an abstract painting I have completed last fall. it was my first experience with pure abstraction. I really enjoyed it and I tired to create some more. The only constrain I created for myself was the colour scheme. I decided that it will be more effective if I tired to stick to a limited pallet and try to create something out of that. I included a couple of other pieces that I created during the same time period.