from Dec 2000  Thoughts on Painting at the End of the 20th Century   by John Plumb

From the Journal of the American Abstract Artists, Spring, 1999

I see abstract painting in the late 20^th Century as the flowering of visual sensibility of the most important and personal kind.  It has, as in another 20^th Century form, jazz, the capability of isolating the subjective �voice� or identity of the painter in a purer form than is often realized in figurative painting.  The working process fuels the imagination of the painter in the free use of paint and any other materials he or she wishes to use.  The abstract painter�s sensibility can be likened to a divine hand which through a responsive choice makes something that is unique in its lyrical and expressive quality and content.  The freedom of the painter is identified by this reactive working process almost more so than in any other art form, because the formal constraints are about the contextual needs of each individual painting and how that keys in to the moment of creativity.  This is why it has been and still is very difficult to know when an abstract painting is finished.  The form can change if necessary and very often does, from painting to painting, deepening the content and expanding and stretching the formal invention of the painter.

.In recent times the term �art� has been applied to almost any skill or activity which is related to any kind of isolation.  Art, in my opinion, is something that lasts and is capable of being reinterpreted by succeeding generations as a significant isolation.  The painter does not have to worry whether his work is of significance or not.  That is up to the viewer in the future who will, or will not, find meaning in what the artist has done.  The psyche and assumption of every abstract painter, working with this kind of freedom, is recorded in every isolation that he or she makes.  And personally, I think and feel that the best of abstract painting will be the most important visual art of the 20^th Century.

The author is an English abstract painter and writer.  He is known for being a member of the Situation Group and for his work as a Color Field painter.

Copyright 1999, John Plumb