Emotions, Colors and Abstraction
Akshita Lad, Cap d’Antibes - 1, 2021, Oil/acrylic on cotton canvas, 40✕30cm
An abstract painting often does not seem to represent anything in particular and it is precisely this particularity that makes it such a powerful medium for communicating emotions: when we observe an abstract work of art, we can identify with it, and remember our own experiences. We don't have the help of objective images to help us recognize specific stories or objects. We only have the essential elements of the image: lines, shapes, colors, shapes, textures, etc. An abstract painting creatively mixes emotions by playing with shapes and colors. Colors are often associated with emotions, which is why their use in abstract art is so interesting. FOCUS Art Fair invites you to discover four artists who will try to move you with their paintings!
Grace Lee, Unknown no.4, 2020, Oil on canvas, 97✕97cm
Grace Lee, Unknown no.6, 2021, Oil on canvas, 102✕102cm
Korean artist Grace Lee says that through her “peaceful color palette” she seeks to provide an aesthetic space of comfort and empathy for the people looking at her paintings. The purpose of her art is to serve as therapy: she wants viewers to recognize themselves in the paintings, to see their sadness in the brushstrokes. With her art she evokes her own psychological and physical difficulties, she reveals herself to the spectators in the hope of creating a real bond with them. Her abstract paintings each have a dominant hue, but when you look closer, you can observe the different shades and the soft atmosphere that emerges from the different tones present on the canvas.
Through her paintings, artist Xinqi Li also seeks to provide a familiar experience for viewers by depicting how we exist in this world. By using bright colors, and shapes that can be both fluid and sharp, she reflects the inner transformations of each individual. She works a lot with layering, which seems to express all the different facets of human life.
Xinqi Li, Overlay, 2021, Acrylic paint, 100✕120cm
Natsuko Takekoshi, Le délice de l’amour, 2021, Mixed media on canvas, 33.3✕24.2cm
Some feelings, such as love, can sometimes be difficult to express with mere words, but the task becomes easier in abstract art. In her series entitled The Delight of Love (2021) Natsuko Takekoshi uses pink and gold to represent love and light respectively. As for the shapes that the painting takes, they are reminiscent of flowers that seem to bloom, like a budding passion: they are a symbol of beginning, as well as of beauty. Love thus becomes a flower that embalms the world with its sweet perfume and that will continue to bloom, again and again.
Akshita Lad, an artist of Indian origin, also uses nature to evoke feelings: in her painting Solitude, a wave seems to be crossing the canvas. Lad uses this single wave to evoke silence and loneliness, but not in a distressing or unpleasant way, it is a feeling of peace that inhabits the person looking at it. Lad likes to use color to give her work its own energy, here the canvas is all shades of green, all very soft and soothing.
Xinqi Li, Liquidity, 2021, Alcohol ink, 50✕80cm
The use of colors and forms in abstraction is based on concrete human experiences, making these paintings universal. Through the emotions expressed, viewers can identify with the painter, therefore allowing the artists to form a strong bond with their audience.