#art, «Nilo» (Unfinished and when do you finish?)

Ok, so my artwork is surreal-expressionism. You know that and you already know that It has nothing to do with your visual reality or your impression of reality. It has everything to do with how I think things should look like and appear in «life». In other words, it is my vision of reality. Everything about surreal-expressionism is internal, including the original reference. In that way it has a lot to do with abstract expressionism, or abstract art (properly stated).

So… This means that to paint an abstract, an abstract expressionist work or a surreal-expressionist one, one faces, or encounters the same problems that any strictly figurative artist encounters. One must consider the subject matter, what is to be «expressed», the size, the colour scheme, the composition and a million other things that continue to travel with you on the road to completing your painting. Abstract art, and abstract expressionism ends up being much more difficult to manage and finish because the reference is not readily available, so one has to continually imagine it, (as it is internal). This means that it may be hard to determine when the painting is actually finished or if it can take a few more brushstrokes.

The example above is of my latest painting «Nilo» (like the River Nile). It started off being surreal, then changed to expressionist, then to abstract expressionist and now has ended up being a hybrid, surreal-expressionism. It is the portrait of an owl, therefore it is figurative. But in abstract expressionism certain aspects of figuration are permitted (not in abstract art) so I could have followed that road to the finish. However, I did not think the message was being said correctly (the first problem).

By changing the style the message changes, so I found that by solving that first problem I could continue on to the finish. But I did not want a realistic owl, or one that was fully surrealistic. So I changed the colour scheme and the second problem was solved. From there on it became rather expressionistic. Again a problem arose. It was not «talking» to me, and I pity the artist that does not listen to his paintings!

If I would have left the painting as an abstract-expressionist work, the owl could not have been so well defined and I wanted some precise definition. So again a problem. This time it was solved by changing the style again to something I could work with happily and thoroughly. And that can make my painting say what I wanted, have the colour scheme I chose, the size and the composition in the way I had prepared it through several sketches. Surreal-expressionism was the only way.

Only now… I am not sure it is finished… What do you think?

NOTA BENE

The image of «Nilo» above does not properly represent the painting. I have manipulated the digital photo and changed the intensity, hue and shadings. I have done this because, as I said before, the painting is not finished.