Abstract Painting and Abstraction

Emyr Williams

• Publisher: Crowood
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781785003622
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Techniques

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. By looking at his own work, Emyr Williams covers the practical issues of abstract art before explaining techniques to develop your own personal style and approach. He emphasizes the relationship of colour to surface and the importance of seeking a profound connection with your art. The book will help you to learn about the difference between abstract and abstraction and see how an artist has developed expressive art in many different ways. Superbly illustrated with 167 colour images.

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.

Tumble, 1988: acrylic on canvas, 56 × 166cm.

Hardline, 1988: acrylic on canvas, 55.5 × 160cm.

Haircut, 1988: acrylic on canvas, 68 × 160cm.

These can be described as ‘one shot’ paintings. Each colour has a different ‘personality’ in colour. The paint was applied with a combination of brush and squeegee culminating in colour ‘chords’.

These paintings were made in my final year as student of Fine Art.

As well as dealing with the making of abstract art I will examine the issues that have fascinated and inspired me to make art. I have worked as an abstract painter since the mid 1980s when I slowly developed my painting out of the landscape of south Wales, whilst a degree student of Fine Art at the University of Reading. I developed a love for colour and very slowly developed my thinking about colour as I made my work. The work led the way. Painting is such a physical and emotional experience that any intellectual approach should really respond to the work rather than instigate it. Abstract painting is complex but to think it out is to complicate it and ultimately to defeat its potential abstractness. A great challenge for any painter is always dealing with the ‘intention’ to make work. What is it that makes us wish to pick up a brush and dip it into the coloured glues of paint and make our marks with these colours? Not only that, but what drives us to return time and time again to continue to make these marks?

I will explore how to manage and shape the responses to such an intent. Having an ambition to make art can soon dwindle if hard work and some intelligent strategies are not respected or in place. The sculptor David Smith once said ‘It’s all in the set-up’… and the set-up begins in the studio.

The images in this book are from various times over thirty years and you can see how different the work is. Much of my development as a painter has been determined not just by my ambition for my painting, but by the spaces I have worked in. Each of these spaces has had its own unique character and this has influenced how I am able to work as much as what I was trying to do in each case.

THE STUDIO

My studio, working on smaller paintings and watercolours. I keep all sorts of images to ‘feed’ my work on the walls and change it according to the work.

Utilizing a barn roof in the US as a studio in 1994.

‘Studio’ is quite an emotive word, which can conjure up a romantic portrait of an artist’s garret. In this scene the artist is a tortured character waiting for inspiration. As the old joke goes: why don’t artists look out of the window in the morning? Because if they did, they’d have nothing to do in the afternoon. Funny yes, but such a negative generalization. Being an artist has an exotic or bohemian perception frequently attached to it. The kind of person who is perpetually angst-ridden or lounges about indifferently or even indignantly, in a repose of ‘anti-ness’ against the ‘misunderstanding world’.

In reality a studio is a place of work and more. Fundamentally the ‘work’ part is the engine, but unlike many jobs it is also a place of reflection, research, refuge and discovery. There are few disciplines which involve so many diverse activities or states of mind as that of an artist. Artists used to enjoy great status in Renaissance times, employed to help clients or rulers envisage plans as well as produce art for religious, civic and private enjoyment. If you think about it, when we understand something we often say ‘I see’. Underpinning all of these diverse activities within the studio is the drive to make art. If you want to make ambitious art, ‘urgency’ should be added to the mix.

Studios can be all sizes. Any space – domestic or industrial – can in theory be turned into a working studio space. I have worked in a whole range of spaces: from a tiny bedroom to the roof of a barn. Many of my studios have been utilized from existing spaces. As an artist there are opportunities to work ‘on location’ in residencies or workshops. These offer short-term spaces and have to be organized quickly and efficiently. Therefore, having a clear sense of the sorts of things you wish to achieve and what can be achieved in the space is key.

The space one has will dictate the kinds of work that are possible, but with invention and a little vision, significant art can be made in even the most unforgiving of circumstances. Artists have been notoriously triumphant in working against limitations – this is part of our DNA. Consider the struggle Michelangelo would have had in working on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: paint dripping down onto his face whilst perched high up on a scaffold a few feet from the ceiling, often lying prone underneath, muscles tensed (whilst trying to depict muscles tensed), the highly pressurized demands of fresco painting adding another kind of tension: you have one chance and a minimum amount of adjustment manoeuvrability to paint into wet plaster. If it’s wrong, it has to be re-plastered and you start again; the physical demands are as great as the artistic or intellectual ones. All this and without forgetting the expectations that a commission of such magnitude creates: the scrutiny of the prestigious patron; the knowledge and reflections of a discerning audience to come; and the conflicting awarenesses of one’s own humility and social standing in the setting of the civic and religious framework of fifteenth-century Florence – no simple everyday job. If you ever get the chance to see this artwork, it is a sobering as much as an enlightening experience.

A studio in the university at Luminy, Marseille during the Triangle Artists’ Workshop in 1995 – using portable boards to display works.

Artists develop their own well-proportioned studio with good light, ventilation, storage, heating and even viewing areas. Having a good space does not necessarily equate to making the best art though. Being ‘studio smart’ and having routines in place to maximize one’s efforts is more important than an idealized showcase space. It’s a dream for us all to have the custom-built studio. Joan Miró had the architect and close friend Josep Lluís Sert design his perfect space on the island of Majorca. Until you get to that stage, concentrate more on making the most out of the working space you have. A studio must be managed and its purpose of facilitating art-making should be paramount, lest it can surreptitiously drift into a hideaway or extra living room to hang out in. You have to be on top of your space.

SETTING UP A STUDIO

A working area is dependent upon the space you have available.

This is how my studio is set up: I have a central ‘deck’ – which is a slightly raised platform made of pieces cut from 8 × 4ft flooring chip board. They are all screwed to a supporting frame to tie them in to one another and provide a large, even surface of 14 × 10ft. Around this deck are walls with different functions. Viewing walls, general display walls and a ‘working wall’ which is the highest at 10ft, reaching up into the apex of a pitched roof. I use this wall area for taller, larger works and it has a doorway in it for access. Any really big paintings tend to be made on unstretched canvas which is made on the deck and I use a sort of pulley system to hoist them with battens stapled at the top to cover this wall. I sometimes use a large step ladder also to view a painting when it is on the deck, to get a better look at it.

I have a large table with shelving behind it which I use to store my mixed colours (always arranged in colour groups) and some other shelving which keeps my paints (again arranged in colour groups) and mediums. I try to buy paint in bulk (it’s a bigger out...