Abstract art

I am  doing an online course "Pathways to Abstraction" with Pauline Agnew.  It is a fascinating challenge and a change from conceptual and figurative art making.  In fact it is my most natural approach to art, and one that I always used on my textiles. But the paintings ask different questions!  As ever, it is a reality check to get some of these early attempts onto the screen and surprising to see what works.   Watch this space

Returning to this subject a few weeks later, I am delighted at the fun and freedom this method of working gives to me.  Yesterday I mixed up a range of colours from the work I did on the Dunblane Museum paintings and drawings, and started simply to play with the colour and to explore it in a different way.

A huge pleasure.  This is a natural way of working for me, especially after the hard work I have been putting in on drawing and painting in the classical style.  However, I think the way to think of this freedom is as a kind of energy which combines and energizes more analytic work.  Here is a sketch I did over another of these little "abstracts", using the same palette, and later built into more of a face.  It is a really good starting point, with so many implications about not being bound by figurative observation.