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July 2026
 

I've been thinking about how a lot of people view abstract art: For many, it's like a foreign language that they automatically assume they don't understand.

 

In my first gallery exhibition, at Raanana’s Agam Gallery in 2022, I found it interesting that many people who stopped to look at art that they could interpret as recognizable pictures barely glanced at my paintings, and just kept walking by. This didn’t bother me because I understood that my abstracts had no meaning for them—more than that, no one had ever suggested that art could be enjoyed even when there’s no obvious “meaning”.

 

It’s a statement I’ve heard many times: “I don’t get abstract art.”

 

But I will tell you a secret: Even the artists usually don’t know what their abstracts mean. Some abstract artists do start with an idea—maybe flowers, or a landscape—and then “interrupt reality” and create a picture that takes that initial idea and stretches it into a different shape or conception of the original idea. My process is more often what is called “intuitive painting”—I begin with whatever colors, shapes or marks I feel like putting down, and continue from there, never knowing what comes next before it comes. Sometimes that process takes hours, sometimes it takes weeks until I arrive at a sensing of harmony or asymmetrical balance that feels complete. For me it is all play, and hours go by without me noticing.

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But most of the time, abstract artists get to this feeling of "finished" without any definite idea of what they've just created. It just feels done. We may well give it a title based on what it makes us feel, and that's really the point: How does it make you feel? What do YOU see? Nobody can tell you what you're supposed to see or feel. Abstract art is not meant to be "understood". It's meant to stir you, challenge your perspective. And let you ponder quietly.