Remember what I wrote last week, about topics I can't reflect on in these comics because I don't want to share them with the entire internet? Well, I led you astray. I wanted you to sit on that dilemma for a week, so you really had the time to think about what you would do in my situation. This might not have worked, because you didn't read the previous blog post, you didn't really care, or you're binge reading these comics in the future (all of this would be totally fine by me, I don't want this to come off as accusatory).
But in case you do care: What can you do if your process of unlocking your inner self involves sharing it with the world, yet you still want to maintain a certain degree of privacy? Well, the title of this post gives it away. It's a tool as old as art itself. Every artist knows about it. It's one of the most powerful capabilities of the human mind. Still, many people are woefully unaware of it, which is why it is criminally underutilized these days.
Abstraction allows you to incorporate any thought, any feeling and any state of mind into a work of art. It doesn't matter how private, how sacred, how intimate it is. It doesn't matter if it's something that could never be expressed with words or, if it could, if it's something you would never dare to tell anyone. As long as the degree of abstraction is high enough, it is safe and sound from anyone who wants to harm you with it.
So, how is this possible? Well, if you've been a reader for quite some time, you might remember what I wrote about people and situations in real life that serve as inspiration for these comics. If you know me in real life, you might recognize some details or situations that you were part of. Yet, if you weren't part of these situations, you can't really infer any information about them, because the recognizable parts are mixed together with all the fictional stuff. None of the characters represent real persons and anything that happens could be entirely made up.
Abstraction works very similarly to this. You craft the surface layer, the part of your art that everyone sees, in a way that may have nothing to do with the thing you want to express. Yet, you carefully arrange parts of it in a way that may seem random to anyone, except those who already know the concept you really want to communicate. This effectively allows you to filter your audience for those people who will understand. It allows you to communicate feelings only to those who have felt them before. It allows to address the most intimate thoughts in a way that can only be understood by those who have also had the same thoughts independently. It allows you to speak only to those people who will not hurt you with what they might learn.
One thing to keep in mind, though, is that this is difficult. It's one of the main things that make art difficult. After all, you're trying to capture a fuzzy concept you might not fully understand yourself, by making it recognizable in the properties of objects that have nothing to do with it. Most of the time, the best thing you can do is throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. I sometimes draw things without exactly knowing why, but at some point I begin to understand. That's probably why these comics are so effective in communicating with my subconscious mind.
