Abstract Wall Art

The Wall Art Market was the subject of week 4 in the e-course Make Art That Sells.
For me the assignment was quite complicated.We were asked to make an abstract piece.
There had to be flowers in it, or at least one (because that sells ;-))
And a word or a quote. Preferably handmade with paint and collage-style. We also were given some colors. Mine were blue and orange.

Well, abstract isn't in my comfort zone at all, but with all these extra instructions,
I found it quite confusing. What exactly is abstract?

After a week of searching and struggling, I came up with this work. Titled: joy

What do you think? Is this abstract to you?
Would you like to hang it on your wall? (if so, you know where to find me ;-))

First we had to gather all kinds of (in my case) orange and blue elements,
which you could use in the coming assignment. I made a lot of textures, using different techniques.

When we got the assignment, I started to look for abstract flowers and abstract Art.
Because of the collage-style I also looked in an old DADA book, where I found the Art of Jean Arp. Really nice shapes and interesting compositions. (See the first image below)

The image on the right above shows some abstract flowesr from Eloise Renouf,
I like her work a lot!

This week I found out there are lots of levels of abstraction. Somehow I knew this before, but  this week it was an eye-opener. For me the left image is more abstract than the right image. Abstract Art can still contain figurative elements. That's making abstract a bit less 'scary' than it was for me.

I played with shapes, and made the piece below, which I named Rhythm and Blue.
I'm really curious what you think of it and would love to hear your feedback :-))

but.......

there were no flowers in it...


So I continued my journey. I made some versions of a giant abstract 'flower', but when I saw this the next morning I knew this was not working. I wouldn't want to hang that on my wall. But what I liked about it was how I integrated the word joy as a pattern within the 'flower'.

I also wanted to play more with repetition.

I added more flowers. Found other shapes, which I liked and made my final piece.
The word joy is integrated in one of the 'petals' of the shapes, so it is there, but not too obvious.

This week was the most difficult week till now, but after all I'm happy with the process. I'm a bit less 'scared' of abstract now. I'm curious if I will integrate this more in my future work. I hope so!

And there's only one week left of this inspiring course.
So this will be continued next week!