Abstract Art is my Awakening

To me, the understanding of abstract art rests on two main ideas. Before its emergence, art was largely representational—depicting familiar subjects and recognizable forms. Painters portrayed people and their surroundings through various styles and atmospheres, often shaped by the demands of royalty and the Church.

From around 1910, painters in Europe—and later in the United States—began to move away from representation, turning instead toward the expression of life and color as subjects in themselves.

“When I no longer see an object that I recognize in a work of art, I am expressing more than I am representing.” -Philippe Benichou

In moments of joy, the sense of a separate self dissolves. There is no awareness of identity—only experience. In contrast, sadness or disconnection brings a heightened sense of self, a feeling of being out of sync with the whole. Yet when that state is processed creatively, it becomes a path back and an opening into reconnection. We are constantly moving through moods, feelings, and inner states. Abstract art, to me, is partly the expression of that movement.

Abstract Art: Self-based Art

Abstract art surprisingly coincides with the birth of modern acting in the early 1900’s. 1910 marks the birth of a new kind of art where representation takes on a new direction. Presentation replaced representation and it was of enormous significance. Wassily Kandinsky makes the declaration that “art is free” and begins to create what he called “pure abstract art”, which becomes the first abstract movement.

The parallel emergence of modern acting and abstract art is no coincidence. Man had lived through role-playing and identity-based living for thousands of years. Over time, we became identified with what we do and the roles we play. As societies grew more stable and abundant, specialization followed: potters, blacksmiths, farmers, healers, etc.

Individually and collectively, we categorize the world through through difference and the roles we play. Artistic expression emerged from the need to give form to experience—to express, recognize, and make sense of life.

Prior to the 1900's, acting on stage was largely external. It relied on the externalized representation of character through body, posture, gesture, voice, and diction. Actors were not expected to feel their roles or inhabit them psychologically or emotionally. Acting was a precise, often grandiose display of "bigger than life" behaviors—what we would now call theatrical, or overacting.

The great skill in those days was to project a self-image of the character through voice and body; it was grand, dramatic and spectacular.

Conversely, modern acting inspires the actor to live and breathe inside the character. The goal was to “become” the character by endowing it with a natural or real appearance—not exaggeration. Audiences today participate in the internal experience of the characters portrayed by professional actors.

It is from this observation that, in my view, abstract art came into being and continues to be recognized.

As an abstract artist, I externalize on canvas what I experience within but cannot express in words. The forms, shapes, lines, and colors that emerge are no longer recognizable objects drawn from my projected self-images—that is, what I think I know about myself and the world around me. From this perspective, life becomes a continual dance of appearing and disappearing forms.

Abstract art is, for me, an awakening from self-image. When I no longer recognize something in a work of art, I begin to know myself as pure experience. I become transparent to the ideas I hold about myself. I move beyond the mind into direct, abstract feeling. You could call such abstraction emptiness, spirit, love, freedom, joy, or oneness.

The dualistic roles we inhabit in society—rich and poor, young and old—create divisions that are reinforced over generations. Left unexamined, they limit the depth and richness of our experience. We come to believe in these identities: successful, happy, generous, lonely, hardworking, moral, God-fearing.

Abstract art, by refusing to represent objects, points toward a liberation from conditioned role-playing—what we call ego-life—where everything is defined by its opposite. At that level, abstraction is not political; it is experiential. It does not argue or persuade, but invites direct encounter.

In the modern world, politics, religion, and moral systems can become shelters for identity. But when one is grounded in oneself, their hold begins to loosen. What remains is the possibility of walking one's own path.