Abstract: A Long Detailed Story

Having an artist for a great grandmother, who painted nice scenery but seriously enjoyed a wicked abstract painting, and growing up next door to my grandmother who paints amazing artwork that is, well, down right strange by conventional standards, I have a healthy appreciation for abstract art. I really enjoy it. I like looking at a painting that you can decide means something different every day.

When we lived in Bismarck a few years ago, I saw an exhibition of a local abstract artist, Michelle Lindblom and LOVED her monotypes. They were, unfortunately, far out of the price range for the barely employed wife of a medical student. What I really liked best was how the bright colors worked together so vibrantly.

About four days ago, I was staring at the trendy beige wall in my family room, wondering what I should put in the narrow vertical space. (I have most of the other walls in my house planned out, but this one was elusive). I remembered I had a very large 20×24 canvas down in the basement that I had gotten awhile ago with plans of a certain kid project that we never did undertake in Wisconsin. I thought about taking it home with me to North Dakota when we leave at the the end of this week, and bribing my grandmother to paint on it, but I realized as I was sitting there that I already had an idea of what I wanted on that
canvas, and that I’d never be able to explain it to my grandmother, and that in all her wonderfully weird abstract artistic glory, being told what to paint is something my grandmother really despises. It shuts down all her creative juices.

I thought a little bit more, and realized that although I have NO painting talent at all, and could never paint something like Michelle Lindblom, where the colors converge to really make a statement about something that is abstractly real, I am good at smearing colors around. Inspired by some monoprinting I had done with Mr. PM and Ms. CP a few weeks ago, I ran to the basement and grabbed a huge sheet of plexiglass I happened to have lying around along with some acrylic paint.

I hauled everything to the backyard on the deck and began smearing colors together. I misted the paint with the garden hose, and slid the plexiglass all around on the canvas. And I liked it! However, when I did all my smearing and sliding, I did it horizontally, and the picture needed to hang vertically. When I turned the picture vertical, it was all wrong to my head! Then my husband, in awe of my absolute abstract – wannabe-strangeness, walked over and turned the picture back to horizontal, but upside down, and it was clear that this was the right way the picture needed to be. Except, I needed it to be vertical, and I couldn’t get the upside down horizontal version out of my head.

I propped the picture up against the wall vertically and tried for two days to like it. I looked around the house for other spots to hang it horizontally, but there were none. I thought about throwing the whole thing in the trash. I considered trying to paint over the canvas and making it white again, something my grandmother did every once in a while when she was done in the middle of making a picture.

Then I decided to experiment with making a few more layers of smear and slide over the top of the original layer. So my husband came home again to find me wildly painting on the deck, misting with spray bottles, twisting the canvas around in the air to make drips, and blotting off parts I didn’t really like with cleaning rags. I love that my children don’t even bat an eye at this oddness, although the neighbors have probably formulated some very strange notions about my sanity by this point.

The second time I did a lot of thinking about how I wanted the colors to work and what I wanted to do to make the painting vertical. And then I forgot that when I tipped the canvas onto the plexiglass, everything would REVERSE. So I ended up with something entirely different than I envisioned, again. But, along came my husband, in his supportive role, and he tipped the painting upside down again. I yelled out as his arm was in midair, “Don’t you dare turn that thing horizontal on me!” And he didn’t. He left it upside down, but vertical, and I like it. I’m hanging it up in my living room even though I can’t really paint.

As a side note, although acryllic paint washes off most things, I was reminded during this experience, that it doesn’t necessarily wash out of your shirt, and it especially doesn’t wash off the wood of your deck if it dries in the hot sun before you finish your artistic escapade. We now have a very colorful version of our recently stained deck.