I recently went to a four day workshop with Sterling Edwards. He is not only a terrific artist but he is a wonderful person and teacher. He has a very specific style and he paints much quicker than I do. When I try and paint quickly I end up with a mess. But on day three we worked on abstract painting and voila I got a painting.
In a way when you are a realistic painter like I am and you do an abstract painting it frees you up. You do not feel the need to depict what your painting in a way that is not only exciting but that duplicates the look of the object itself. You just need to think about shapes and lines and colors and values and textures and put them in an interesting composition. It is fun to do it and you do not have the anxiety of getting it to look like what you think it should look like. You can just let it develop on its own and if you do not like it then you can just turn the paper to the other side. Now if I was an abstract painter I probably would not feel the same freedom because I would expect something from myself. But what if one day we could all just let go of our expectations and just paint. It would be a wonderful day!
