Abstract art: Unsettled Molecules

Abstract line drawing with acrylic wash and oil pastels. The animated surface warns of inner turmoil and unsettled times.
For more, visit-
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Abstract art: "Tottering"

The abstract drawing "Tottering" is a random structure of shapes, colors and forms linked together in an abstract manner. Completed in 2001, it alludes to once invincible structures and characters that have since tottered then tumbled. How many can you guess and name?

The pen and ink drawing is colored by acrylic paint, markers and oil pastels.

To view more unusual abstract art visit
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"Swept" -mixed media drawing

Swept, mixed media drawing on paper.

Swept, going with the flow. Some have said, only dead fish and leaves go with the flow. Swept, by the need to obey the rules, to act with conformity. Some are swept by passion to "take no more" and risk everything for a cause. Some are swept by a strong current, a tsunami, to resist is futile. Others are swept by peer pressure, by love, by hate.

Visit my online gallery at

http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/gallery
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Abstract art: "On the outskirts"

"On the Outskirts"
Abstract pen drawing with acrylic paint on paper. 8.5"x11"

To view Art Online:
http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/

Abstract Art: Monolithic

Starting to muse about an abstract drawing can 'open a can of worms.' Well, metaphorically anyway. As a line rambles across the paper, new vistas emerge. New forms. New directions. Leading to a new perception, delicately balancing on the periphery of the work, then retreating and returning to a previously recorded area.

Monolithic, a brain-like mass, a homage to brain power and the epic achievements of man. Still, desertification of once fertile areas, continue its relentless trek. Can brain-power be used to create artificial lakes in the desert? Many predict water will become our most precious commodity. Can the engineers start creating the artificial lakes, fed by rivers that pour their resources into the sea. Save the earth, save the people, create artificial lakes in the desert.

Using a ball-point pen, later switching to pen and ink, adding touches of pastel, building the form, a sinewy mass, waiting to be sculpted. Acrylic paint provide the aqueous ground that cements the monolithic structure. A new structure emerges. The experiment continues...

To view other experimental, abstract paintings, drawings, digital collage and prints, visit-

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http://emooyoungart.blogspot.com
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Motion Denied: Abstract Drawing

The abstract drawing "Motion Denied" was a visual play on words. Motion restricted in a confined space or perhaps a refusal to grant bail in a criminal case. This charcoal abstract drawing tried to depict a struggle to burst free from confinement, restrictions and conformity.

To see more abstract paintings, drawings, digital art and prints, visit

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Abstract Art: Leaving Kingston

LEAVING KINGSTON

Sometimes leaving an area is not a properly controlled activity, getting the moving van, leisurely loading your furniture and memorabilia and driving off into the sunset. There are many stories of forced departure, hurriedly leaving an area due to threats, Just enough time to grab what's at hand and leave, never to return.

These thoughts were uppermost in my mind, having read a news report, of an exodus on a particular street.

The drawing was not an attempt to depict a narrative. But letting the mind wander and the pen following the dictates of the mind.

To see other drawings, paintings digital collage artworks and prints, visit -

http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/gallery
http://emooyoungart.blogspot.com
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Four Abstract Drawings

Four Abstract Drawings - Inflated forms, Interstices, Isolated and Le Danse. In the late 90's while experimenting with intuitive lines, these abstract works came to fruition. These are pen line drawings with acrylic wash, and pastels on paper.

To view my online gallery, showing paintings, drawings, digital collages and prints, visit -

http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/gallery
http://emooyoungart.blogspot.com
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Icarus: The Flight of No Return

Although warned by his father, Daedalus, not to fly too near to the sun, Icarus ignored the warning. Perhaps, it was the joy of flying, the great escape, the freedom, at last, from exile in Crete.

Daedalus, a fine craftsman, the story goes, was imprisoned by King Minos for whom he had built the Labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur. (Half man, half Bull). To escape, according to Greek Mythology, he carefully fashioned two pairs of wings, one for his son and one for himself. He spent a long time studying the flight of birds and the design of their wings. He built his wings out of feathers and wax. The design and construction worked.

Before the day of the escape, Daedalus warned his son Icarus, not to fly too close to the sun or too close to the sea. Whether by sheer euphoria, teenage zest for a thrill or he simply forgot the warning, With no altimeter to indicate the altitude, Icarus flew too close to the sun. Predictably, the wax melted, the feathers dropped out of the wings, he flapped harder, to no avail, soon he started falling and plunged to his death in the sea. Today, hang gliding, gliding, parachuting, kites and other variations have replaced feathers and wax. But thrill seekers must be careful.

Here are a few pieces of art on paper, in mixed media, I created, in the 90's, while reflecting on the myth. Other examples in this series can be found at-
http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/gallery

Abstract art: Fragmenta

Abstract, flowing, intuitive lines have always played an instrumental role in starting a painting. As the lines travel across the paper, So too, my thoughts begin to flow. Abstract forms begin to take shape. They are scratched into existence.

Shades of red add to the definition of the forms. They are compartmentalized so each can be studied separately. They are fragments of forms. Unfinished fragments of thought.

To view more abstract paintings, drawings and prints visit http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/gallery
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"What can a line Do?

In Abstract Art, what can a line do?

Line art has been around from the earliest attempts by man to depict his thoughts. Line can mean so many contradictory things.

A line can lead you on the wrong path. Or it can direction your eye to a focal point. A line can define, limit, separate and when connected to other lines, frame or enclose an area.

A line can be confusing, it can be amusing. It can be expressive. It can be inflated.

A line can obscure and obfuscate. A line can lead to better understanding.

There are straight lines and there are squiggles. There can be lines of strict demarcation. Some lines define a boundary. Some define a home, town, city, state or country.

Here are a few of my line drawings.

To see more visit: http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/gallery

The New Year

December 9, my first blog for the new year... I've created some new videos on YouTube. They can be viewed on the side panel on the right. I've been experimenting with music to combine with the videos showing some of my abstract paintings and drawings. They are a challenge, but great fun to make. I spend hours trying new beats, new exotic sounds. The latest-"Abstract Extracts" attempt to replicate sounds you might hear strolling past pulsating night clubs at Hard Rock Cafe. As you stroll, Latin music blasts from the left, opposite is a Jazz Pub, Moving along, the exotic sounds of Morocco, then the hard driving wail of a rock band. The abstract art flashes to the eclectic beats. It's a one minute experiment. I've completed 10 of these experimental works.

Also working on a 16 week program with the publisher of Success magazine, Darren Hardy - "Designing the Best 10 Years of your Life." Hope to really work at it and not drop it after 2 weeks.

Reading about John T. Unger, most of his work are sold thru the Internet using Twitter, his blog and interviews. He is a fan of Hugh McLeod's concept of a Global Microbrand. - " A tiny brand that 'sells' all over the world... the Global Microbrand is sustainable. With it you are not beholden to one boss, one company. one customer, one local economy or even one industry. Your brand develops relationships in enough different places to where your permanent address becomes almost irrelevant."
That sounds like what I'm seeking. Especially in this time of economic turmoil.

I'm also bombarded by offers that virtually guarantee, that I'll make a small fortune every month. If I wasn't firm, I'd be spending hundreds of dollars already. Are there any that really work?

More notes on Abstract Art

Further reading in the history of abstract art revealed the opening up of a new world of possibilities in modern art as the era of representational art dimmed. Also as new scientific discoveries were made, abstract art flourished in a parallel universe. Not representing, in an illustrative way, the discoveries, but an opening up of the mind of the artists.

In "Painting in the 20th Century" Werner Haftmann writes "... abstract painting offered possibilities of expressing in pictorial terms the spontaneous processes which take place within the personality. It also provided the associations and suggestions with which an inner experience of reality could be made visible. This pervasive preoccupation with the possibilities of abstract painting resulted in the fact that each painter undertook for himself a fresh speculative examination of pictorial means and formal processes. Meditation and speculation became for the contemporary painter closely related forces which held his creative work in a state of tension."

He also stated that "The inevitable effect of these reflections was that the painters perceived much more clearly the astonishing correspondences between contemporary intuitive and scientific experiences of the world and nature. The complex structure of matter, the concept of mass as dynamic energy, the concept of the magnetic field, the overlappings of time and space, of the finite and infinite, were now seen by the artist for what they really were: parallel manifestations of a more abstract experience of reality, an experience which was fully active in himself also."

Art, in this new way of thinking exploded all over the western world.

Abstract art on paper : "Duality"

ABSTRACT ART ON PAPER

In a more structured way, the drawing kept to a loose geometric construction of shapes and forms. Pen, markers acrylic paint and pastels were utilized in a intuitive, flowing pattern. The question of mind and matter, good and evil, man and woman surfaced after.

To view more abstract art, drawings and collage, visit- http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/gallery

Abstract art on paper

ABSTRACT ART ON PAPER
Here are 3 examples of abstract works on paper done a few years ago. They were executed in pen and ink, acrylics, markers, oil pastels and pastels. Small abstract works on paper, start at times, as a process of 'fleshing out' thoughts and ideas, with the thinking that I'll enlarge and paint a larger version. It rarely happens. I'm more drawn to spontaneous work, tentative, intuitive and largely abstract. The thoughts and ideas evolve as if on a trek into the mind, lost in thought.

The Titles are 1. Contravene 2. Cornices 3. Declining Prude. ( A parody on the ever popular title 'Reclining nude')

Carving- Abstract drawing

Carving evolved from scratching pen and pencil lines into a form more abstract than real. The pen acting as a chisel. Carving into existence this entity.

To view more unusual drawings visit-

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Abstract drawing - Binary

While abstractly drawing, the forms gradually divided itself in two. Like an amoeba cell sub-dividing. Binary Fission.

Has anyone heard the outcome of The Collider? Slamming atoms at nearly the speed of light, in a sense, a small attempt at recreating the "Big Bang".

The action of cell division is also the earliest stage in the human ovum dividing itself after fertilization, orderly, to create a new being.

The drawing is the result of a wandering pen, many thoughts on a variety of fundamental things, then embellished with pastels, conte crayons and oil pastels.

To view more of the unusual visit-
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Abstract Drawing- "Awakening Molecules"

Are we creating today, genetically modified organisms that could prove resistant to all our current methods of curtailing them? Are we moving too fast in our experiments? Can we control the extent of the mutations that could occur?

Conversely, are we moving fast enough to cure diseases, hunger, starvation and desertification?

"Awakening Molecules" raises these issues and more. Of course, this is just a line drawing animating the questions. Wriggling these nagging issues into the consciousness of those who could do more. Those who could easily waste less. Knowing that much of the solutions are within our collective grasp.

But this is a two dimensional line drawing.

To view this drawing and many more paintings, drawings, collages, and prints, visit-

http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/
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Three Abstract Drawings

Three abstract drawings on paper, " A State of Flux," "Advancing," "Aroused".

For more further viewing of these drawings and other paintings, drawings, collages and prints, visit-

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Abstract Drawing- A new form emerges

A new form emerges from the barren plateaus of a blank paper. It is pen and ink that extracts it from the mind to the paper.

Notes from"Kandinsky"
Today, I'm reflecting on this quote from Kandinsky:
"The work of art must serve the development and refinement of the human soul: indeed, art is the "daily bread" of the soul. The artist, Kandansky continues, is no Sunday's Child of life. " He has a difficult task to fulfil, which often becomes a cross to bear. He must know that every one of his actions and thoughts and feelings constitutes the subtle, untangible, and yet firm material out of which his works are created, and that hence he cannot be free in life - only in art."

Such profound statements must be digested slowly. What are your views on the opinions of Kandinsky, the father of abstract art? Did his work reflect his words?

The drawing shown and others can be viewed at
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Art and Nature by Picasso

Picasso's views on Nature and Art

Picasso in "Picasso on Art, A Selection of Views" by Dore Ashton, stated "They speak of naturalism in opposition to modern art. I would like to know if anyone has ever seen a natural work of art. Nature and art being two different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our conception of what nature is not." ( De Zayas, 1923)

In another opinion on nature Picasso compares art and nature in previous eras.

" Nature is one thing and painting is quite another. Painting is the equivalent of nature. We must thank the painters for the image we have of nature. We perceive it through their eyes. Generally speaking, we stick to to the reproduction which the classical painters gave us, like the painters of the seventeenth century, Poussin. The image they gave is accepted as the true nature, because their syntax is well established. But we have no assurance that this image is truer than other images created in other epochs. Actually it isn't anything more than a question of signs. It has been agreed upon that a specific sign represents a tree, another a house, a man, a woman; exactly as in a language the word 'man' evokes the image of a man, the word 'house' a house and this in all languages although in every language the word varies. It's an established convention by the use of these signs" (Warnod 1945)

What are your views on nature and modern art?

Abstract drawing-Der Barber

Using charcoal to explore a more textured line drawing journey across the page. The end result suggested, in an abstract way, figures in a barber shop. Pastels were used to enhance the background. The drawing was executed on paper.

To view more abstract artworks, paintings, drawings, collage and digital fusions and prints, visit

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Abstract art - 3 the hard way

Notes to 3 the hard way

Using oil pastels, a medium that allows for fluid, unrestricted action, 3 figures emerged from the darkness and forcefully presented themselves on the page.

In 1911, Guillaume Apollinaire, the spokesman on Cubism wrote that they had accepted a profound connection between the Cubist multiple perspectives and the dynamic nonperspective conception of space-time and had made the concept of the fourth dimension a commonplace of modern aesthetics and the vocabulary of modern art.

"Dynamic nonperspective" seem to be a contradiction in terms, but the dynamism in a fluid, almost aggressive attack on the paper seem to propel the figures forward. Menacingly.

To view my online gallery, visit

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Paul Klee's Pictorial Universe

One of the artist that I've read about avidly, is Paul Klee. Born in 1879, his was a brilliant career that incorporated Cubism, and the German alternative to Cubism - German Expressionism. Working with his friend Wassily Kandinsky, considered the father of Abstract art, as tutors at the Bauhaus. Much is written about both artists.

Today I wanted to draw reference to the wide ranging subject matter and sources, Klee incorporated in his inventions.

Phillip Larson wrote " His internal source books laid out Cubist frameworks, stratified color charts, calligraphic flourishes, children's drawings, proto-Surrealist doodles, toys and puppets, caricatures, tribal masks, minute zoological/biological specimens, architectural/theatrical perspectives, pictographs/hieroglyphs, and, of course, all keys to the German typewriter. To this day, no historian has secured the critical perimeters around the prodigious collector-progenitor."

His love for music, musical instruments and the theatre were also depicted in numerous drawings and paintings.

Wall of Silence

Wall of Silence

In many high-crime communities, you dare not speak out or report what you see.

This Abstract artwork evolved using oil pastels, Employing layers of color then scratching away the upper surface to reveal the underlying colors. Metaphorically revealing the 'truth.' Injustice is fast and violent. Justice is slow, tedious and unreliable. Silence is safer. Safety is sense. It seems.

To view other abstract paintings, drawings, collage, digital fusions and prints, visit-

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"Verdant" - Abstract artwork

VERDANT
Using oil pastels on black paper, meandering lines evolved into something abstract but tangible. After a long dry summer the land becomes verdant once more.

Today, distant rumble, dark ominous clouds warn of a downpour.

Worked on finishing two abstract pieces on paper, yesterday. I thought I was finished, but a new thought, a new technique changed the picture. Was it a piece of bad news that impelled me to slash red paint over a 'completed' piece? Who knows. When I'm working, the impulses intervene. I'm just a hand, a conduit.

To see more abstract artworks - paintings, drawings, digital fusions, prints, visit -
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Abstract painting- Triad 3

Today, was spent reading emails and avidly following links to gain more information. Topics ranging from how to write a more interesting blog. To write topics that will engage the reader, to hold their attention, amuse and entertain them. In Success magazine - on creating a full life, maximize your days and leave a legacy. Then in my email folder dozens of offers to get rich quickly using online marketing. Great reading.

Now to return to my blog. The painting above was started with a vigorous brush outline in black, green was added to fill the spaces, then white paint was introduced to add volume to what was emerging. Three abstract personages emerged from the ochre background. Were they members of a triad, meeting to plot something sinister? Or were the swirls representing a karate kata? With abstract expressionism, many interpretations can be formed. It's interesting to hear comments by viewers, because individuals 'see' and interpret something that is subjective and relevant to their experiences. Quite different from what I see. After all, I'm using paint, shapes, form, color and texture to arrive at this end result.

To view more unusual abstract paintings, drawings, collage, and digital fusions, visit-
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Synthesis 6 - Abstract Painting/Collage

Synthesis- fusing abstract elements

Synthesis is defined in the dictionary as follows- Combination, composition, putting together, building up of separate elements esp. of conceptions or propositions or facts, into a connected whole, esp. a theory or system; joining of divided parts.

This abstract painting/collage - "Synthesis 6" is a fused composition of line drawings, pastel, oil pastel, collage of paintings, magazine and other paper elements to build up a new entity of expanded forms. It was one of a series on the theory of synthesizing disparate, divided elements - abstract pen and ink drawings, old paintings,colored magazine paper- into a more unified composition.
To view this painting/collage, other unusual abstract paintings, drawings, collage and digital combinations and prints visit-

http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/gallery
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Stolen Oranges- abstract art

I guess it must have happened once too often. And that was it.

Many stories have been told, the one I heard: the owner in a fit of rage, hired a huge tractor and flattened 30 acres of his orange grove. Thieves were reaping more than he did. So he ended their plunder.

The title for the abstract work above, merely alluded to that event. What started as a monotype with black silkscreen ink, was enhanced by acrylic paint and pastels. It was done in a fast abstract expressionist style with little thought given to anything representational. It started with circular shapes that evolved into this final composition.

To view more unusual abstract paintings, drawings, collages and digital fusions visit-
http://www.yessy.com/emooyoung/gallery
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Abstract art -Squarely

In the previous post, the painting's colors were distorted. Here's another upload of "Squarely"