Recently I had two thoughts on my mind and had a little chat about them. Here is a summary of my ideas.
One was about Rothko and his monochromatic images. Talking about them I was surprised as, after a while, I felt some wish to "spend a bit of time" with one of his images, maybe the famous black one, but in a quiet environment, relaxed, without museum visitors, more in a place of aimless concentration. An empty refectory in a monastery came to my mind.
Before I had seen Rothko as interesting and also "serious" (not just challenging conventions), but I didn't really engage with his images. But now, just in my imagination, I felt it happen how another approach opened up: Just being with the painting, without these overcharged art world expectations, feeling a, to a degree, shared experience. Someone who enjoys form and abstraction, but also the "unformed", "rawer" emotion of a colour and texture. Not an act of "revolution", but one of "allowing the rawer elements (not formed into an intricate construction) to just exist next to each other." I could connect to that. A Rothko painting as the "freedom to not synthesize". A nice experience, not being stuck with the "fame", but having a fresh, plain, humble encounter.
And the other thought I had lately: "I love backgrounds." Why then, I went on thinking, don't you just make purely abstract images and simply forget about foregrounds? Hm, is it the greater freedom? Maybe a background does not need to "mean" something itself? Or the very opposite, meaning "radiating" into the background from the foreground elements?
The foreground could be seen as an invitation, a door to enter the image, a threshold to cross. Portraits are quite dominant in my work, but often the backgrounds are more than just decoration.
Actually, background and foreground also speak to the viewer on different levels. The face in a portrait is a clear message for the rational and classifying instance of the mind, while the background communicates with the level of emotions more directly, less "filtered" and less fixated as a meaning. Foreground as a noun, background adverbial.
A figurative foreground is kind of "finished", while an interesting background can be a realm to enter, to dwell in a developing experience. A background that keeps my experience engaged for a while reflects back on the "noun" of the foreground, sometimes qualifies it newly, lets me discover new aspects or associations. The background can introduce dynamic, process.
My (and other people's) images, the ones I really like, are invitations to daydream.
And that dialogue between the "noun" of the foreground and the expressiveness of the background creates a whole that goes beyond just the "depicted" object. And I think, in this process of the image unfolding into a whole of dynamic tendencies and surface narrative, the image can begin to function like a symbol for the inner processes in the viewer. Exploring and discovering the image is also exploration and discovery of myself - a dialogue.
Sometimes people say, or I think it myself, "you have so many portraits". True. Isn't this a bit monothematic, maybe boring to others? But I don't find my portraits repetitive or boring. Each (of the good ones) interests me - again. "Maybe, like with your new 'Rothko approach' you should look at it differently: You are not creating a 'collection of faces to get to know', you are creating experiences to resonate with." And these experiences DO differ (for me at least). So what is similar about these images isn't actually the core of what they are about.
That being said: Even under this perspective I do see strong shared emotional qualities. But I think that is what making art as a human is about: you have your themes, and again and again try to materialise them in a slightly different way that, seen from the outside, can be very recognisable. In a way, Mahler, or even more so Bruckner, wrote just "one symphony" with their 9 attempts at it.
Maybe, playfully, I can try the thought, what rectangles are for Rothko, faces are for me.
