Learning to paint abstract art

I have for a long time been interested in abstract art and for most of this time have simply been painting very loosely in what may be called a (semi)-realistic-abstract style. Yes, I know a bit of a mouthful and a contadiction in terms , but I never know what to call my paintings. I am now trying to start to paint a series of paintings which do not rely on an imaginary subject - just to see if I can do it. Will it provide me with a satisfactory result, willI be happy to exhibit these paintings in my next exhibition ( with the art group).

I have done this before, that is exhibiting abstracts but although I felt good about them I was very defensive about the paintings for a reason that I could not quite fathom. I guess I hear too much of the, "my two year old could do better than that", crap. Many artists would love to be able to paint with the freedom of a two year old, but that does not necessarily mean the result is a great or even a good painting. Maybe too much "illiterate" art has been put before the public in the name of "freedom of expression".

First of all, I do have a certain amount of drawing skill, maybe not the best but these sketches below show results from life classes which I used to take every week.

I have to admit that I became bored with this sort of art, for some reason I was not attracted by the subject, so I took to landscapes:

This suited me much better, and I have been happy to paint landscape paintings for getting on for 25 years but again I am feeling that there is more. My landscapes have become looser and I have begun to use the descriptive term semi-abstract, but there has always been an element of the subject matter remaining.

Some years ago I did some abstracts for my group's exhibtion, just to be different but as I said above I felt quite defensive about the results although I had spent a long time working out what I was going to do, sketching the ideas and finally committing the work to canvas. This is a short video I mad putting together some photos from that exhibition.






Finally I have decided to bite the bullet and to try and develop my skill with pure abstract painting, so that I can feel confident about the art and proud of putting it into an exhibtion.

I would love to hear what you think of these last two paintings, they are both done in pastel and are approximately A4 in size ( 8.5 x 11.5 inch). You may comment here or on a larger version of the art shown on RedGage:- for the yellow abstract and for the blue abstract.

Thanks in advance and I do hope to be able to post more abstract work in the very near future.

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