Abstract versus Automatic

When I see works that are abstract I am amazed by how the artist did them. People will call my work abstract but it is not. Abstract means to diverge by degrees from a starting or reference point. This is not the process I undertake.

I believe others like Jackson Pollock in the pure drip painting and Henri Michaux and Mark Tobey in many of their works are similar. Obviously these artists early on worked from forms and got further and further into abstraction derived from those forms but at some point the connection broke. André Masson is noted as giving inspiration to Pollock and Gorky with his automatic drawing experiments and I think this is the difference. It is that break into automatic drawing that makes this work separate from abstraction.

When I see an exceptional abstract work I can see the intense understanding of form. But in contrast I do not consider form when I work. The results in my art making seem to approximate this type of imagery but the process is organic, not derivative or contemplated, and so is in fact not abstract. I might say the same for the artists I have named above; their art making is more on an organic response level rather than based on a great concern of form.

Automatic artists were not and are not really concerned about picture making. One look at Pollock's work will tell you that. But I suppose he had the inspiration and courage to make that break, which ties his work in closer to the surrealists. For myself I must say that concerns of picture making hinder the process and I have had to do much work to put what comes to aesthetic ends (and I realize that these ends do not represent the central nature of the work.) However, it seems to me on viewing abstract works that picture making is the guiding goal. And that is why they are so beautiful.

I cannot present an explanation for what this organic response is but I am thinking of the results as a naturally forming crystal. Patterns reoccur in my work, most noticeably a drift to the left lower corner (which I have corrected to a degree with a more balanced posture.) And sometimes series of images will have very similar characteristics. Where this comes from I do not know but it is something I am discovering and not conceiving. On viewing the work of the artists listed above I think I can see the crystal emerging in their imagery. And to me this organic form that shows itself makes it incongruous to apply the term abstract.

However the question remains, if the goal of this type of work is not picture making, what is the purpose in delving into an organic response and how does that tie into contemporary, historical and anthropological concepts of art?

Not that I need to prove the point any further but who has ever called their children's work abstract? And are the painting elephants really capable of abstract representation?

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