By Jonathan Shih
“Abstract art is the simplest and yet the most complicated of all arts. When a figurative painter makes a painting, he has in front of him the object or subject he is painting. He has time to reproduce it. He can go back to his canvas, correct it, judge the effect, compare it to the original, etc.
In abstract painting, and particularly in Lyrical Abstraction, the opposite is the case. The artist is in front of his canvas with nothing but his paint tubes and his imagination, no reference points, no rules. Painting is now no longer a question of reproduction, but of invention. It is both exhilarating and distressing. It requires an extraordinary amount of concentration. The artist goes in an instant from the deepest despair to the most insane euphoria. He experiences the purest form of exaltation, a profound emotion that the figurative painter will never know.”
Georges Mathieu in “Nord-Éclair”, March 1998
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