“Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird?…people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.” – Pablo Picasso

What Picasso says about understanding art is very relevant to how we approach abstract paintings. Many people think that abstract paintings must have a specific meaning of some sort, which could be clearly understood and articulated if only they knew how. This misconception is not helped by the endless supply of people prepared to spout nonsense about what they think the artist was trying to say. The almost inevitable consequence of this situation is that people can either feel as though they are being excluded from sharing in some secret knowledge, or alternatively conclude that abstract painting is in fact all a sham. Either way, the result is that many people do not feel well-disposed towards modern art or abstract paintings.

I certainly identify with Picasso’s remark as far as my own paintings are concerned. If I had a specific message or a meaning that I could articulate in words, then I would articulate it in words – the painting would have no purpose. The whole point of creating an abstract painting is that it embodies something that only it can, in a way that cannot be put into words. It is not an essay it is a painting – it encompasses and expresses things in a language that is unique to the medium of paint. That is why we should not try to ‘understand’ abstract paintings in the way people sometimes feel they ought to be able to.

The viewer should not look for a clear narrative in an abstract painting – it is not going to tell a story, or refer to an external ‘subject’ in the same way that a figurative painting will. But that does not mean there is no meaning or no subject, or that abstract paintings cannot communicate with and move people. When asked about subject matter, the Abstract Expressionist artist Jackson Pollock said, “I am the subject”. Pollock’s statement is not just true, it is inevitable.

The experiences, personality, memories and mood of the abstract artist cannot help but be fed into the painting if the artist approaches the work in an open and honest way. I do not need an external subject or idea before I can create a painting – I simply begin. The fact that I am me and no-one else is what makes my work different to anyone else’s, and the same is true of all artists. The colours I choose, the marks a make, the accidents I choose to leave, or to obliterate, these are all things that I choose because of who I am.

If you were to present several different artists with the same basic design on a canvas and ask them to pick up a brush and develop the painting, the differences in what they would choose to do would be enormous. I have watched other abstract artists at work on paintings and thought “I would never in a million years have chosen that colour and put it there.” Not because I think it is wrong or bad, but because they are who they are and (to quote that other leading artist, Morrisey!) “only I am I”.

Decorative painting is a very broad field in the realm of the arts. Since time immemorial, its definite meaning is being argued upon by artists and scholars from various universities and institutions. The attempts to be exact with the term’s specific context always fail, though, since they are blanketed by people’s general understanding of it: any kind of painting whose aim is to come up with something beautiful, using an array of brushing techniques, media, and materials.

In contemporary times, decorative painting is used to refer to artistic works painted on surfaces other than the conventional canvas. Among these surfaces are fabric, wood, glass, plastic, ceramics, potteries, marbles, tiles, and the like. Like all forms of painting, decorative painting necessitates different types of paint, specialty brushes, and other materials used for stroking.

In the usual home décor and children’s art lessons, the use of acrylic-based paint products has been a tradition because these products dry very fast, clearly produce desired colors, safe, water-based, and economical. Among more experienced decorative painters though, various kinds of complex oil-based paint, gels, glazes, and extenders are used in order to come up with deeper and more complicated effects.

Techniques in decorative painting are diverse. They range from the most basic brushing styles like freehand stroking to the most complicated ones like stippling and pickling. Decorative Painting is an institutionalized field in the visual arts; many scholarly institutions worldwide offer decorative painting as undergraduate and graduate degrees. Students who finish these courses become professional decorative painters and top-notch artists.