Day One, Abstract Two

acrylic on canvas board
© Nicki Ault, 2012

This is the second exercise from Day One at Emma. To be honest I can't recall the specifics of the exercise and my notes are at the studio, but we were supposed to continue working with the shape theme as before. For this one I decided to try some layers of drippy washes and glazes underneath and then use rectangles to describe more recognizable tree forms on top. I was not thrilled with this result at all, but when I showed my kids, my youngest asked if he could put this one in his room! 

I really struggled through this first day of abstraction. Part of this struggle involved the fear of working in front of a new group of people and then being analyzed, critiqued and judged by them (but we were all in that boat together). Another part of the struggle was that I was feeling a bit paralyzed by the strong desire to do a really good job and paint some awesome abstracts! However, even more than all of that, a thought came to me later in the day as I realized how much time I had spent staring blankly at my materials. My epiphany was that creating an abstract painting was so wide open that I actually found it restricting. Abstracts can be anything and that was just too overwhelming - I didn't know where to begin. I talked to the instructor, Alicia Popoff, about this struggle and she certainly empathized. She said we would be discussing that very thing in the coming days and we would talk about inspiration. She also made it clear that I needn't feel pressured to only create abstracts in this class- I could do more representational work if I wanted. As tempting as that was I knew the reason I was taking the class was to step out of my comfort zone, so I would press on like a good little abstract student! :)