Abstract Painting and Abstraction E-Book

Emyr Williams

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Abstract painting and abstraction can be a daunting and frustrating genre of art. How should you approach a surface? How can you use colour effectively? How can you make better, more expressive paintings? This inspiring book answers these questions and many more. Through a thorough analysis of his own work, Emyr Williams covers practical, theoretical and historical issues of abstract art and explains a wide range of working methods to help develop more demanding personal approaches to the making of abstract painting. He emphasizes the relationship of colour to surface and the importance of seeking a profound connection with your art.

Leseprobe

Abstract

Paintingand

Abstraction

Emyr Williams

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2017 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

© Emyr Williams 2017

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of thistext may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 362 2

Frontispiece: Jump, 2017: acrylic on canvas, 174 × 120cm.

For Lidia, Ioan, Dominic and Elena… and to Caterina, for leaving the garden light on.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1 The Studio

Chapter 2 Colour

Chapter 3 Paint

Chapter 4 Making a Painting

Chapter 5 Abstraction

Chapter 6 Abstract Painting

Chapter 7 Collage, Paper and Drawing

Chapter 8 Learning from Others

Further Reading

Index

Acknowledgements

When I was a student in my third year, I went home to find my parents had put up some of my previous term’s paintings on the wall. They were all abstract paintings and I was moved by the gesture of support. When I looked around the house though, I discovered that every painting had been hung upside down. ‘At least I was consistent,’ my father said. I was indebted to their unfailing support and counsel. I have been more than lucky to have had amazing teachers and tutors throughout my formative years.

Tick Tock, 2017: acrylic on canvas, 176 × 122cm.

Thanks to The Crowood Press for asking me to write this book – it has been a memorable experience. There are too many people to thank for their help and advice over thirty years at the ‘paint face’, but I do remind several at opportune times – friends, colleagues and family. My wife has listened and looked patiently and even suppressed the odd yawn and I couldn’t function without her support. I am blessed to have such magical children and am continually in awe of their talents.

Preface

One sees a picture at once, or not at all. Explanations are no use. What’s the point of passing comments? All that is only approximate.

PAUL CÉZANNE REPORTED BY JOACHIM GASQUET

Writing anything about painting is a distinctly challenging enterprise. We can describe paintings in words but any description, even if sensitive, is ultimately separate from the experience we have when seeing the work. There are many writers or indeed artists themselves, who write with wonderful clarity and insight about art. It is hugely rewarding to read such writing, yet even with a lucid text in hand, or a piece alongside a work to refer to in the gallery, when standing in front of a painting we are distinctly and profoundly removed from these words. Words move through time, whereas paintings are apprehended through light. Just consider that for a moment. How can an experience of light be translated into one of time? A language should be translatable, therefore it is a moot point if painting or any visual art for that matter is a language as such. The best we can hope for is a sensitive connection between what we see and what we describe and explain.

This is not an historical book on abstract painting. Although I touch upon several ‘historical’ artists whose work can be explored or researched further, I did not want to follow those increasingly well-trodden paths from Impressionism through to modernism when discussing abstract painting. Although many of the artists on that journey are ones that I have encountered frequently in my own work, I think it important, in the early decades of this new century, to look beyond these initial references and seek more profound connections with all great art of the past; connections that can feed and revitalize painting – in particular, abstract painting. I do not see abstract painting as an art form disconnected from the great art of the past. On the contrary, as a painter I feel compelled to compete with the achievements of the past and to create new ones, which take abstract painting into unforeseen and exciting territory. I also hope to illuminate possible routes that anyone committed to making abstract painting can connect with – on their own terms. This is not an instruction manual for making abstract painting, but I hope that the information included will assist or even inspire anyone with a dedicated interest in abstract painting to demand more of their art and use strategies that can facilitate meeting this demand to ultimately make better abstract painting.

This Way Up, 2017: acrylic on canvas, 173 × 122cm.

I will share my experiences of making abstract art. I have worked through many different kinds of paintings on massively different scales for over thirty years. Over this time I have made work that has led me further and further into the mechanics of painting; how to control paint and never to take it for granted – to question its qualities and make them work for me. I have tried all sorts of paint, yet have always returned to acrylics as my main working paint. I enjoy their versatility and massive range of colour, plus the mediums and gels that extend and alter the paints allow me to work in expressive ways.

Although the images in this book date back to the mid-1980s, they are not in chronological order. All dates are given however as are the dimensions of each work. Dimensions are important for me as they provide clues to the physical reality of the work.

I have tried to give as many insights into different ways of working as an abstract painter as I can. Even though there are lots of descriptions attached to my paintings, which I hope puts them into their context and provides further information about their making, I have found that simply seeing the image can be even more telling in ‘comprehension’. Therefore, I hope a reader will be able to ‘bounce’ around the book picking up lots of clues as to the journey I have been on, as well as read things in a logical order. Making abstract paintings has enabled me to explore a multitude of approaches. Each phase of my work over the past thirty years has evolved dramatically. I hope that seeing this evolution will be every bit as informative as anything that I am saying about it. That is the pleasure for me when engaging with a book on painting: seeing the variety and challenge in the work.

I have been fascinated constantly by how the quality of a painting’s surface, its ‘facture’, determines the experience of seeing its colour. Indeed it is through colour that all my work ultimately finds its expressiveness. For all the different ‘looks’ that my paintings possess over the years, all of them are united by the importance of colour. My work is a constant search for a particular experience of colour – one that feels right visually. When I find the experience of colour that I am searching for, it gives me something to believe in.

Chapter 1

The Studio

Painting is no problem. The problem is what to do when you’re not painting.

JACKSON POLLOCK

Our early purposeful drawings and reflexive marks, arcs or oscillations with a loaded brush, pen or crayon emerge as utterances from the primordial swamps of perception. The first set of visual ‘grunts’ is often joined by subsequent daubs which build into a chorus of marks – each new scribble or scrawl affirms or challenges its predecessor and each mark seems so meaningful and so important. A child gazes, scrutinizes and absorbs their creation, looks puzzled and proud in equal measure. As adults we marvel at these early concrete manifestations of form and their wild energy mystifies or excites, bemuses us even, with their energetic charge. Immediately we are stirred into action and after due praise feel compelled to utter that seemingly most innocent of remarks: ‘What is it?’ This choice of words, it could be argued, contains a sentiment which will affect or condition our art-making for the rest of our lives. For in this earliest of prompts we are moving ‘art’ from the visual to the conceptual. We are seeking to exert a control and to qualify the motivation for expression in visual form.

Organizing a photoshoot for my degree show. Seeing a large number of paintings in one place can be very revealing as broader issues emerge.

An abstract artist trudges wearily about these distant child-like landscapes of space-time, searching for that energy, that initial visual charge, to re-ignite it in the present, to see it again in their own work, phoenix-like; to fight back against our earliest – loving – interrogators and in so doing, let our once-caged animal instincts run free again, no longer ‘shackled’ by the ‘what is its?’; each new gesture becomes our scouting party into future unforeseen worlds. Perhaps if we choose the right colours a land of luminosity awaits – alien at the outset, yet as time soothes our tired and raw mechanisms of perception, reveals to us a familiarity. Colour can do this – be so alien from the first encounter and yet instil a sense of acknowledgment in us, as if we had recognized something known to us all our lives.