Daily Practice 187/365

Title: "The source of all rumours"

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It's interesting how many people don't like, or don't understand, abstract art. They are generally more comfortable with representational art - photographs or paintings of "real" things, where they know immediately what it is they are looking at. Yet what we all perceive as real is the result of our capacity for abstract thinking. That capacity is what brought us to make frames of reference for the world around us that in turn were used to define things. We all recognize an apple and would consider a photograph of an apple as being representational. And yet "apple" is a construct for something that is wonderfully abstract, that consists really of shape, lines, tones and textures in terms of appearance (not to mention fragrance and taste which are again at their basic level abstract concepts that we have defined). I love abstraction because it is a different way of seeing and perceiving the world, it seems far less limiting to me and it relies upon those basic qualities that objects in our world have that are pure, that existed long before they were used to define and name those objects. What I also like about abstraction is the way it connects directly and viscerally with our emotions. When we look at a picture of a sunset, or a cat, or a sailboat on the water (or a picture of a sailboat on the water at sunset being piloted by a cat) we do have an emotional response, but it is measured and shaped by our perceptions of our world. It lacks the raw energy, ill-defined nature of emotional responses to abstract work.