Abstract Ideas

Abstracts are found in our world yet seem drawn from some different world entirely, as if we see them through portals to a parallel universe. Removed from context, reduced to their essence, we feel perplexed and disoriented as we gaze at them. Line, shape, colour: these number among the inhabitants of that alien place, and they speak to us in a primordial way. We sense their emotion and feel their meaning without the intervention of the language that serves as a crutch for our own communication. These portals to the abstract world hide in plain sight but discovering them takes a willingness to loosen our grip on our own world and open ourselves to theirs. But what a thrill when they leap out from the familiar and reveal themselves to us! Our world is so complex, while theirs is so simple. Perhaps this is why I seek them out: for refuge for a while in a calmer, simpler world, where labels of things are irrelevant, and feelings need only be felt and not explained.