My Preliminary Abstract Work So Far/Gerhard Richter Research

The first pieces of work I have created in my sketchbooks have looked into different ways of creating abstract expressionist grounds with paint and pastel. This work was inspired by work by Franz Kline (shown in the previous post), along with work by German painter Gerhard Richter. I was initially inspired by Kline's brush strokes that show strong movement and contrast, but have begun to work in different methods of creating marks with paint, such as scraping it across the page, inspired by Richter. Two pieces of work that have strongly influenced my work by Richter are ‘Abstraktes Bild’ (1999, Oil, image from gerhardrichter.com) and Untitled (1997, Oil, image from blogspot.com) gerhardichter.com was one of my main sources of information on his work: https://www.gerhard-richter.com/

The Images below are my own sketchbook work in which I explored different methods of abstract painting inspired by the pieces above. I will continue to experiment with these methods and then combine this style of painting with other processes and mediums, such as collage (to create portraits) and drawing. The abstract ground will hopefully give some sort of movement and energy to the flat printed or drawn images layered on top.