Making it abstract

I have spent some years now in learning how to create a figurative illusion of reality.  But I want to go deeper and explore the links between the subject and my inner self.  At the moment I am making a series of oil paintings depicting the Clydesdale horses that share my work space in the upper Forth Valley, Scotland.  I have got to know them all in various degrees and feel a strong attachment to some of them.  That give me the basic drive and motivation.

Now I am “unpicking” the images to explore shape, colour, texture and feeling in the hope to learning more about them and making much freer works.  It is very difficult to dissociate from the methods and energy and meaning involved in making the figurative work.

Here are some of the first pieces I did after the painting, thinking about the main shapes and colours.  In my next post I will show how I developed this project towards a final painting.