Looking for a Home by Dee Overly Colored Pencil This River Birch tree lives along the Maumee River in Ohio somewhere between Grand Rapids and Waterville. I was traveling back home to Michigan when I spotted it. After a couple turn arounds and finding a place to park, I was able to tromp through some brush and capture some pictures of the bark.

I’ve decided to jump on the band wagon with this piece, Looking for a Home, and other extreme close-up pieces I’m doing and refer to them as Abstract Realism. I know, another oxymoron to confuse everyone, and a term that apparently hasn’t been confirmed in the art world yet. Dictionaries define the two words separately but not as a union. It doesn’t even appear in Wikipedia. I’m surprised some modern intellectual artist hasn’t swooped in on that yet. But if you type “abstract realism” into google, you’ll find several artists who are claiming the title. There have even been a couple attempts at writing a manifesto for it. However, there must not be enough of us jumping onto this wagon to make a full fledge movement yet.

This reminds me of the room designers on HGTV (which I am totally addicted to) who are always making up “artist movement” descriptions for their room creations. They come up with names like “sheik goes urban” or “the American country Celtic twist” to make their room designs legitimate. It drives me nuts. I know they’re pulling this out of their butts. They do it because people love labels. It makes things real for them.

So, back to my label… Abstract Realism. Why put these two words together? Well, it did feel a bit abstract as I was fighting my way back to that tree, and taking the pictures was quite real. Now you know why I don’t write definitions for Wikipedia. When the definition does get written, I’m sure it’ll be full of words whereby we’ll need another dictionary to understand it.

Meanwhile, what I’m doing and calling Abstract Realism, is taking items from the real world and zooming in to enlarge the focus so that the end result feels abstract.

Oh yes, one final note. The ladybug was not there when I took the pictures, she was added later. Thus, giving the piece it’s title. She’s actually too small for the scale of enlargement I gave the bark. But this way, the viewer has to hunt for her.

Have a grand day!

Filed under: Art Work

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!