abstract

this is a collection of abstract paintings (mostly oil on canvas, one on wood panel, one on paper). the first two, !@# and @#$, are the first two paintings in my study of perceptual bias, which is a concept that i find extremely important. the idea is that it is nearly impossible to look at something (or hear an idea or have an experience for that matter) without seeing it through your already constructed biases. in the visual arts, this is important because it means that you sort of already "know" what the image looks like before you even see it. or, put another way, it means that you take some basic cues from the image, and then you construct a set of expectations about what you think it should look like. it is actually extremely difficult to just see something for exactly what it is. on the surface, !@# and @#$ contain simple geometric objects: circles in one, and a line in the other. they are made of just a few colors. BUT THIS IS CLEARLY NOT TRUE! the "circles" are not actual geometric circles (a la Euclid), the "line" isn't straight. you can see lots of different colors within each area. so, do you see the painting for what it is, or do you say, "it's two circles, which annoyingly are kind of messed up, with four streaky colors."? the rest of the paintings pretty much just are what they are, with no particular concepts or ideas behind them.