Surface Abstraction

Surfaces surround us, they reflect our lives - whether as deliberate art or discarded rubbish. Surfaces reflect light, they are tactile and they often appeal to our imaginations - not only teasing us with ideas of what may lie within but also in offering unintended images that seem - to me at least - to be minor works of art in their own right. Like many people, I seem to have ‘pareidolia’ - “a tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that patterns and meaning emerge where none is intended“. I also enjoy the abstract expressionism of the likes of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. They produced abstract paintings that were intended to be expressive or emotional in their effect. They were inspired by the surrealist idea that art should come from the unconscious mind and I think it is this enjoyment of unintended forms and patterns, often in the most mundane places, that I find so intriguing and stimulating.