2026-02-07

BEHIND THE PAINTING ; The Making of Abstract I

A painting rarely begins with a clear idea. More often, it starts with a surface that refuses to reveal anything, a blank canvas that is more of a question than an answer. Abstract I began exactly that way. The 120 × 90 cm canvas first received a rough skin of black and white oil paint, applied with a palette knife. No image, no plan — just structure. A foundation that needed months to dry, because oil paint follows its own rhythm. That slowness is part of the process: the base must be solid before the painting can unfold.

When the underlayer is finally dry enough, a second base is added. Less visible in the final work, but essential. This layer determines how light will move across the surface, how color will behave, where tension will arise and where calm will settle. To an outsider, it may look like “nothing is happening,” but to me, this is the moment the canvas begins to breathe. Possibilities appear — directionless, but full of potential.

Then comes color. Acrylic paint and spray paint behave very differently from oil: they dry fast, they demand decisions, they leave little room for hesitation. The first shapes appear not because I planned them, but because they emerge. Color finds its way across the structure, filling the grooves, gliding over the ridges. This is the moment the painting gains its first sense of identity, even if it is still only a sketch in paint.

Around that time, I experimented with digital filters on my phone. Nothing serious — just play. But one filter transformed the painting in a way that surprised me: bright tones, pastel gradients, pixel-like edges. Not a finished artwork, but a digital echo. Still, it stayed with me. Not as a blueprint, but as a direction. The screenshot became a whisper that returned to the canvas. The color transitions I saw digitally translated themselves into paint — not literally, but emotionally.

The first real color composition gave the painting a backbone. A central form emerged, energy gathered in the middle, the edges began to organize themselves. Warm against cool, light against dark. To an outsider, this might look like the moment the painting is “almost done,” but for me, it is a phase of looking. What stays, what disappears, what needs refinement. The color is there, but the story is not.

When the composition is right, the epoxy comes in. A clear, glass-like resin that spreads across the surface and seals everything. The craquelure created by the tension between materials remains visible but can no longer grow. The colors deepen, the gloss gives the work a new skin. The epoxy layer is not a finish — it is a decision. A full stop. From that moment on, the painting no longer changes.

The silver floater frame is the final step. A calm, clean border that lifts the work out of the world of making and places it into the world of showing. The painting becomes an object, a presence. It catches light, responds to the room, stands on its own.

And then the question remains: what is Abstract I?

It is a work that refuses to depict something specific, yet invites associations. A body? A robot? A totem? A digital structure? It moves between analog and digital, between painting and pixel-like clarity. It is a transitional work — a bridge between the realistic portraits I once made and a new, undefined visual language. Free, abstract, timeless. A work that does not explain, but invites. That does not depict, but suggests. That does not define what something is, but what it could be.

Abstract I is the result of a process where freedom, experimentation, material and intuition found each other. A painting that no longer changes, yet continues to speak.