Similarities in my abstract work

I vary between abstract and non-abstract art (I won't necessarily say it's ever "representative", so perhaps it's more so total-abstraction vs. something recognizable) and I realized I've made enough abstract art to find some similarities in them. I don't have the best rationale as to why I should be finding similarities, but since total-abstraction is so expansive in its non-grounded-ness (the abstraction covers the whole image and its construction, like when the 'everything' essentially neutralizes the subject into being 'nothing'), I believe it makes sense to do. Perhaps I'd like to validate total-abstraction and find moments where it is a particular form of image making and not just a big pile of mess.

In particular it was this etching, which has its own reasons for being focused on (for such a graphic medium of lines or the occasional flat/solid aquatint tone, it can be hard to be abstract in an expressive "painterly" way). There are the process-based parts that I had already been aware of: there are lines of structure that builds an architecture within the abstract image (a forced organization), there is an attention to tonal range and where the lights/darks are (from a design perspective).

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A certain style of brushstroke with an attention to its motion. Of course this has to be made with liquid mediums, which places its shape into the control of the material to an extent, but the result is quite similar across very liquidy materials (pen filler in etching) to more dense ones (mixtures of acrylic and glue, etc.). Most reoccurring is this crisscrossing of slightly curved directions, sometimes zigzag.

While I'm not satisfied by how these shapes come about, the abstract brushstroke typically exists as its own object within the abstract field. It has its own zigzag motion and sometimes an appearance of its own center of gravity (it revolves around a point). In the etching, this shape was made very quickly with pen filler and a toothbrush (of all things), while the example below is made with watered down touche and a brush, and I spent more time overthinking each stroke (so it was constructed more deliberately):

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Most surprising for the etching is this appearance of a splotchy, sticky, sometimes dragged mark, because I'm not even sure how this got etched into the plate when this imagery usually occurs from stamping or lifting sticky materials. The examples are pulled from acrylic and glue mixtures, and really thick touche.

It's also possible for this to appear in non-splotchy forms, more so as a similar image. I would have assumed it could be achieved by a scratchiness, but I've never really achieved it that way. This charcoal drawing was mostly made from rubbings and starts to mimic this characteristic a bit:

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Similarly, there is another 'lifting' type characteristic, but with an outline. This usually occurs when a layer of a material is lifted up, so that a darker layer of paint or some other material surrounds the gap/hole. It also happens with collage. My immediate thought is that this is similar to digital imagery: if you take any sort of shape, completely white it out, and then outline it with a black stroke, more so when the shape has an extremely fuzzy but sharpened pixel edge, or is very distorted in its pixels. I knew this shape digitally first rather than in traditional art, and so I was usually referencing its digital existence. In etching, the creation of the shape is also a bit opposite, where it's the outline eating away at an addition of white ground. Interestingly, it works almost the same as the digital method, where the more distorted and "pixelated" (smaller, but solid splotches of dots or lines) the white ground outline is, the more detailed and heavy the black outline is.

The white blotches can be seen in this photo-plate lithograph. The shape itself were created from distortions to a frame in a video (video effects, then photo effects, and so on). So, I would say even these were created naturally, it was up to the quality of the footage and so on. My classmates said the shape was similar to the shape of a country, or meteorological radars, which is an interesting combination of a naturally occurring shape, yet mapped out or generated by something more technological.

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More conscious to me are deeply engrained scratches. The actual motion of these are something I'm never satisfied with, it's difficult for me to "scribble" mindlessly. Excluding the third example where I scratched into ink to reveal a dry layer of acrylic white paint, these are all engravings made into a surface to then hold ink when wet. I guess its an interest in "carving" without feeling like I'm sculpting or destroying anything; it's carving but with, or through, or maybe resulting in, drawing (and here the perpetual occurrence of "drawing" reveals itself in everything, but that's another topic).

These also sometimes hold ink by channeling a less deliberate stroke. These occur in the etching by its process, but not visually (the scratches where made and etched during a stage where much was already on the plate, and I was open biting it, so that it interfered with deeper areas and widened itself). This example is more so the combination of this engraving characteristic, alongside the shape of strokes (the first one).

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Another conscious characteristic are straight, horizontal lines made in the middle of a chaotic abstract area. It isn't conscious as in made for a certain purpose, in fact I have no idea why I do it other than "I like to." I'm typically very deliberate, adding lines here and there for a balance, or for architecture, but repetitive horizontal lines are never something I think the image needs, I just feel compelled to do it and once that happens I must do it. It's almost a bit obsessive-compulsive in that regard. The etching is the only case where I tried to control this, because I wanted to play with the deliberate straight-edge tonal lines etchings often have, and probably already made some hand-drawn horizontal lines.

These do appear in more purposeful or representational instances, like in my etchings. Usually to allude to or literally depict ladders, they also do the same for electrical towers and power lines: