Abstract Painting

« Abstract Painting » (Purpose, Influences and Coincidence)

by  Barry MacPherson
Programming Director, Pointe-St-Charles Art School

Recently I participated in a Two-Man Exhibition with artist John Pohl « Products From The Mind Factory ». I exhibited a series of twelve Abstract Paintings titled « Songs and Lyrics I Remember ». I am not the first artist to paint to music, as Wassily Kandinsky listened to musical notes and compositions while painting.

Excerpt on Wassily Kandensky referenced below.

( Kandinsky believed that colours provoke emotions. Red was lively and confident; Green was peaceful with inner strength; Blue was deep and supernatural; Yellow could be warm, exciting, disturbing or totally bonkers; and White seemed silent but full of possibilities. He also assigned instrument tones to go with each color: Red sounded like a trumpet; Green sounded like a middle-position violin; Light Blue sounded like flute; Dark Blue sounded like a cello, Yellow sounded like a fanfare of trumpets; and White sounded like the pause in a harmonious melody.)

One of the paintings I did was titled « Strawberry Fields« . After a piece is finished I ask myself if it is truly done, does it work, etc. I would not even venture to guess the number of times I had listened to this song since its release in 1967 and knew the lyrics inside out…  While in the process of making this piece I was so intent on painting to the sounds I heard I missed something so very obvious. It was the line, « Let me take you down to Strawberry Fields where nothing is real ». It was only then the thought occurred to me that out of the twelve paintings, the lyrics of this song actually define Abstraction.

Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Über das Geistige in der Kunst), 1911
Strawberry Fields » (Lennon and McCartney), * Actually a John Lennon composition.

Image above: « Strawberry Fields » 46 x 36″ acrylic on canvas, 2015

Artist Barry MacPherson