The art that shares my home

Shana paints. I live with her canvases every day, on the walls at home, long before any of them becomes an "artwork" to someone on the outside. So I write about abstract art from a specific place: that of someone who lives with it, not someone who visits a gallery.

It took me a while to understand abstract art. I come from a mind trained to look for function, explanation, what something "means." Faced with a canvas with no figure, I'd freeze — as many people freeze — waiting to decode a message. It took me time to realize it wasn't there to be decoded. It was there to be felt, and then, if I wanted, thought about.

Shana's canvases are strong color and contrast, shapes that represent nothing I can name — and that's exactly why they move whoever looks, without asking permission. The same canvas seems one thing to me one day and something completely different the next. It wasn't the canvas that changed. It was me, and what I bring with me when I stop in front of it. I learned more about how my own mind works looking at her work than in a lot of writing on the subject.

There's also what I see up close that almost no one sees: the process. An abstract canvas looks spontaneous, but there's a decision in every layer — what stays, what gets covered, when to stop. It's a kind of work that doesn't allow faking. Either the thing has truth or it doesn't — and that shows up immediately.

I don't write as an art critic, which I'm not. I write as someone who had the luck of having this work close enough, for long enough, to change his mind about it. If you also freeze in front of the abstract, maybe the invitation is simple: stop asking what it means and notice what you feel.

Shana's work is at shana.foletto.me.