Abstract expressionism to me is Jackson Pollock. I know there are more abstract expressionist out there, such as Gorky, Kline, Newman, but the action and expression conveyed through Pollock's works speak to me. For those who are unaware who Jackson Pollock was you may be more familiar with his work than his name. Picture it, a large white canvas with paint dripped, thrown, dumped, and splattered all over the canvas. That's pretty much it when it comes to visually describing the work.
Jackson however didn't just haphazardly toss paint around. He was careful and would occasionally throw out a canvas that didn't appeal to him. His contribution to abstract expressionism belongs to a classification know as the Action Group. Their work displays a great deal of movement and action. And it is this action that I wanted to emulate with my artwork for this exercise.
In fact I wanted to try a little different and get two kinds of action into the piece, to I requested that my wife help me out. My goal was to apply some paint to a canvas, then she would add what she felt was necessary and I would flesh it out to balance the work.
I think it turned out beautifully. Using Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black to create the original which hangs in my house, I feel that we (my wife and I) have captured the spirit of Abstract Expressionism in this piece which I call "Exhausted Enthusiasm". The size of the work is only 8.5" x 11". But it speaks volumes. What you are seeing above is the negative of the picture that I took. My photography skills have declined since college (sorry Prof. Schramm) so to cover up the dark image that I took with the digital camera I inversed the image and I think it brings out that quality of movement and interplay that I was looking for in the work.
Abstract Expressionism is supposed to invoke emotion and feeling from it's viewers, perhaps more so than traditional art simply because there is no definite image to concentrate on and mull over. Instead you are looking at how someone feels and how it came across as actions, and color, and movement. The artwork portrays thought in motion, feelings through painting. It's not just a garbled mess of lines and color but rather a concentrated effort to say this is how I feel at the moment. In the case of the above image, I was Enthusiastic and my wife was exhausted (it was very late at night).
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