Shadow weaving

Shadows to me represent the essence of structures and forms, at once abstract yet with enough information for the mind to process and form some sort of associations with things you see and experience day to day. This could be the city you live in, the food you eat, the people you meet, the place you work, and so on. I think is something that all abstract art achieves, even with the works that seek to be completely non-representational. It's just human nature to form associations, or 'look' for things in abstract art. Just ask our resident psychiatrist, IVV, who likely would disagree with some of what I'm saying, but thats the fun of such discussions. At least that is my interpretation of it. One only has to look at Franz Kline's works and the associations with New York City are obvious. Even Rothko's fuzzy's shapes can have associations with urban shapes, decaying or moss laden walls, and so on. Shadows create interesting negative space, geometric forms and graphic patterns.

A note of contradiction (by IVV): I am writing this about 36 hours after the original post, having re-read it several times. I am intruding on his post, because (a) he is ok with it, and (b) because I would prefer to place these arguments within the body of this piece, rather than as a comment and (c) because I can! As Aditya predicted, I do disagree with several of his assertions. This is not to imply that he is wrong, or that I am right, but that there are different perspective on these themes. Shadows, in general, are not a major topic of discussion in psychology or psychiatry literature - largely, because psychic constructs are based more on image. (e.g. Kohut's work on self-image or Lacan's musings on fear of the image). Shadow doesnt find it's way into this. Personally, I also disagree with the assertion that a shadow represents 'essence'. It is superficial visual impression, rather than a distillation of a complex theme, which to my mind, is what essence means. Finally, while humans do tend to seek associations and meaning, I would not attribute this to 'human nature' - I would contest the existence of such a thing - all nature is eventually subjective, and largely at the mercy of biological, psychological and social factors that are mostly out of our control. The construct of 'human nature' seems a relatively flimsy way of 'normalizing' our need to deal with the anxiety of trying to grasp things we can't quite explain.

That's enough psychobabble and quasi-academic rambling. Back to what Aditya was saying...

Here are some images that I have captured over the years that build upon this theme.