There exists a general confusion among viewers of paintings. When a clear, objective ‘subject’ or recognizable object is not apparent, the term ‘abstract’ is liberally applied. In many of those cases, the ‘subject’ may be the form itself. Metaphorically, that form may lead us to infer feelings, thoughts, substantive content or make other associations. Human beings, after all, innately seek meaning – and will fabricate it if they cannot discern it.

At times, we may be directed towards a meaning by the title of the piece. That may not always be the case and I have known painters to intentionally mislead their audiences by assigning random or nonsensical titles. If there is no useful title, we’re left to simply respond to the form. It’s all we have. It is debatable whether a work can be truly non-representational or non-objective even though such labels may be applied.

In painting, to abstract literally means to draw (in the sense of pull) from. The painter, when confronted with an object or scene, selects (draws from) the object or scene those features (perhaps only shape or color) that will best capture the idea, thought, feeling, sensation, or association that’s desired. Abstraction is primarily a subtractive or reductive process required whenever our senses are overwhelmed by detail or complexity. In that sense, all art is abstract. The advantage of abstraction to the viewer is that it permits the insertion of personal perception into the gaps provided by all the omitted detail.

It requires something of us – a tactile or vicarious participation – reciprocity. Rather than delivering meaning wholesale, which makes only a very small claim on our interest, abstraction encourages involvement and participation by the viewer in order to construct meaning. In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), Marshall McLuhan classifies media as being either cool or hot, based upon the degree of required audience participation. Setting aside the temperature references, the point is that the various means of human communication demand different levels of involvement (reciprocity). In our present technological culture, the value of personal touch has been diminished through the proliferation of media that demand little or nothing from us.

Abstraction may be a requirement of our own mortal insufficiency. We are, in a sense, abstractions of what we were intended to be. And we are conscious of our abstract existence every moment of our lives. We live with a pervasive sense that there is much that is missing. Abstraction, itself, is a condition, not a flaw – or it might be said that it’s a condition that has resulted from a flaw. Our brokenness has limited us, has reduced us to mortal abstractions of what might have been. We advance that abstraction. We edit our appearances to produce a more acceptable version of ourselves that we believe to be more suitable to others. Deceit and delusion are also forms of abstraction.

Perhaps this persistent reduction through abstraction is needed to provide an incentive for reaching out beyond ourselves to fill the gaps left by our brokenness. Abstraction is not accidental. It is the result of a choice. Perhaps the abstraction of our lives is the result of the ‘fog’ in which we exist – or perhaps it is the cause…

As, in Ruskin’s words, “I am, to my much sorrow, now an older person,” I’ve come to realize that the aches and pains of aging are not entirely physical. Perhaps they’re only a symptom of accumulated experience, knowledge, regret, and the sadness for our fallen state. We carry too much. The aged view does not permit things to be merely what they are. A lifetime of experiences and associations attends all that we see. Everything is encumbered by ‘baggage.’ Younger people often choose not to listen to their elders since they often find it too disheartening. The broader view afforded by age is not necessarily a pleasant one.

People today speak of our culture as “polarized” or divided. There’s a distinction. The existence of poles presupposes that there is a transitional space, a gradation, between one and the other. Polarization does not mandate total separation, but division may go beyond simple polarization and can refer to complete and absolute separation.

In a world that has translated everything into ones and zeros, what else could we expect? In a world of ones and zeros, we are cataclysmically divided and isolated, not polarized. It is mystifying and contradictory that our 1/0 culture wants to take those things (i.e., gender) which are, by nature, divided and biologically distinct, and focus on a mythical transitional space. The acceptance of a polarized view of gender contradicts a technological culture that views the world in a binary manner. Early references to the computer as a “brain” were unfortunate and we’ve now come to accept a computerized model for human thought that, like most models, omits the most interesting and important parts. I prefer a landscape, seen in person, to a map.

1/0 existence is not + and -. In a +/- duality there is room for debate and/or dialectic. There are degrees of positivity and degrees of negativity and a transitional space between them. There are no such degrees or transitions when everything translates to either a one or a zero. Ones and zeros permit no debate – you are either “on” or “off.” There is no middle ground. It is, of course, ironic, that the original meaning of “digitize” was to “touch with the fingers,” when the infinite variations of the sense of touch do not permit translation into ones and zeros.

Most of the time, the most important things can be found in the gaps, the empty spaces – synapses between nerve cells; the gap between thoughts and words (read between the lines); meditation in solitude.

The best thing fishing taught me, I think, was how to be alone. Without this ability no writer can really survive or work, and there is a strong relationship between the activity of the fisherman, letting his line down into the unknown depths in the hope of catching an unseen prey (which may be worth keeping, or may not) and that of the writer trolling his memory and reflections for unexpected jags and jerks of association. O beata solitudo – o sola beatudo! Enforced solitude, as solitary confinement, is a terrible and disorienting punishment, but freely chosen solitude is an immense blessing. To be out of the rattle and clang of quotidian life, to be away from the garbage of other people’s amusements and the overflow of their unwanted subjectivities, is the essential escape. Solitude is, beyond question, one of the world’s great gifts and an indispensable aid to creativity, no matter what level that creation may be hatched at. Our culture puts enormous emphasis on “socialization,” on the supposedly supreme virtues of establishing close relations with others: the psychologically “successful” person is less an individual than a citizen, linked by a hundred cords and filaments to his or her fellow-humans and discovering fulfillment in relations with others. This belief becomes coercive, and in many cases tyrannous or even morbid, in a society like the United States, with its accursed, anodyne cults of togetherness. But perhaps as the psychiatrist Anthony Storr pointed out, solitude may be a greater and more benign motor of creativity in adult life than any number of family relations, love affairs, group identifications, or friendships. We are continually beleaguered by the promise of what is in fact a false life, based on unnecessary reactions to external stimuli. Inside every writer, to paraphrase the well-worn mot of Cyril Connolly, an only child is wildly signaling to be let out. “No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect,” wrote Thomas DeQuincey, “who does not at least checker his life with solitude.”

– from Things I Didn’t Know by Robert Hughes (pp. 108-109)

In solitude we can focus on our being and, in a dialectic manner, our non-being. Life confronts us with problems, and ‘we’ are, most often, the source of those problems. Considerable efforts are expended in trying to remove that source from our consciousness. Solitude is difficult and the quiet leaves us restless because we must confront ourselves. No solution we imagine can still maintain our own existence.

In Richard II, Scene 5, Shakespeare writes:

“Nor I, nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing.”

Meditation in solitude becomes prayer out of sheer necessity.

Referring to the observation of nature, John Ruskin wrote in Modern Painters (Vol. 2, 3:3:20): “Greatness can only be rightly estimated when minuteness is justly reverenced.” We hurry through life as though our only goal is to arrive at its end. Hurrying through life as we do, we miss the details upon which all else depends. Meaningfulness cannot be discerned by the cursory glance. There are no ordinary or empty moments. Live slowly with patience and appreciate small things done well.

Our God is a god of the infinite and the infinitesimal.

Of course, there is THE Incarnation, God becoming flesh and dwelling among us at a specific moment in history. That’s the necessity of our human condition – since we lack a faith sufficient to make evidence unnecessary. Everything that is intangible must become tangible. Every feeling and thought must manifest itself. We speak and create sound, a physical disturbance. God “spoke” and created the tangible world.

Jesus Christ was not presented to us as a metaphor – but rather as a fulfillment – the fullness of God (Colossians 2:9-10). In human cases of incarnation, the tangible product of our labors is always inferior to the ideas and images which drive it. Metaphor is a form of incarnation, but it acknowledges its own insufficiency.  We might describe metaphor as a form of imperfect or diverted incarnation.

As physical beings we can only truly grasp that which is physical. The intangible remains ineffable – it dwells in the realm of feelings and mental constructs – dreamlike and not fully knowable.

With our limited capabilities we usually experience meaningfulness through comparison – seeing one thing, in some inexplicable way, as similar to another. To borrow a phrase from Walker Percy, the best we can hope to do is to somehow fix the evolving meanings in time as ‘signposts’ for further contemplation and reflection. We shape sounds, movements, and images in a vain attempt to match the ineffable or, at least, point to it. We make (or find) things that, by their very nature, are not what we seek, but, nevertheless, are suitable to contain at least a few aspects of our experiences. We find objects or shape physical material – wood, paint, words – because we are partly physical and because it’s what we have.

In the arts it’s common to speak of an image, a sound, or a sequence of words as “capturing” an idea, feeling, or experience. ‘Capture’ is a particularly appropriate word choice since what we’ve done is to make something that holds the idea, feeling, or experience; that preserves it, at least for a while, against the ravages of time. What we hold can then be examined in more detail at our leisure. However, we soon find that what we hold is only a fragment – but, hopefully, enough to find our way or point us in the right direction. We have, of necessity, abstracted experience through reduction.

The work is layered – paintings built upon sounds, words, and other images. I recall a small etching by Rembrandt at the Uffizi many years ago – a Sacrifice of Isaac, and the only work that immediately brought tears to my eyes – the arm of the angel lovingly wrapped around Abraham as the sacrifice is averted – an image founded upon numerous encounters with faith, history, scripture, language, and other images – both natural and cultural.

It is all fireworks – the trajectories of our lives, beginning with an almost silent and invisible ascent, culminating in a burst of light and energy and then floating slowly to earth as the ash it was when it began… Such are the individual events, social contacts, careers, and all the rest that make up the times of our lives. We may gather these disparate occurrences together and call them ‘stories’ or ‘memories,’ but they’re all artificial constructions made from an unbroken fabric of human experience.

The ephemeral nature of experience demands a more durable form – so we make things of the physical material that surrounds us. The products may be paintings, writings, photographs, constructions of various sorts, etc. Others may refer to some of these products as “Art” but, if the maker is honest, he/she will sly away from such an evaluative term and simply be content with the process and its evidence. If the work is honest and authentic, it will be meaningful – perhaps only to the maker but perhaps to many others.