Abstract Jellyfish

Whenever I flip through the ‘Explore’ section of my Instagram, I see a lot of poster designs and home decoration. Abstract paintings show up frequently. And to be honest, I used to get a little annoyed. I would think: “OKAY – how can you just make a few dots and call it art? I can make a lot of dots like that! Why do people don’t buy my paintings but they buy this?”

Then I thought: maybe there’s something that I can learn from this. I should try to understand why people like it. Maybe I can learn about abstract art and make it mine.

This painting by Jan Skacelik caught my eye. I thought: these shapes look like jellyfish!

So as my way of getting to understand abstract art, I decided to turn this abstract painting into a realistic painting in my style. I analysed the artist’s colour. I realised how important colours, shapes, proportions and composition are with abstract art. For an outsider, it may look like a few dots, but when you start to really look, you begin to understand that how they pick the colours and arrange the shapes, is precisely calculated. It creates a certain aesthetic and is actually really impressive.

When I tried to turn his artwork into mine, I was struggling to understand how the jellyfish turns, how many legs it can have so that I can maintain a similar aesthetic as the original without destroying the spirit.

In the end, these are two different paintings, but I think I kept the spirit of the painting and still made it mine!

Something a bit old, but the ideas are still new