Whenever my wife, Jean, and I travel to a major destination we look for art galleries to visit.  This has been a habit for me at least since many of my photographic ideas originate from painters as well as other photographers.  In the process this habit has taken us to some pretty amazing places like the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery, the Georgia O'Keeffe Gallery, the Louvre, and the Uffizi Gallery to name but a few.  One of my more serendipitous finds was at the Art Gallery of Calgary a few years back where I was introduced to the work of Jean Paul Riopelle, one of Canada's most celebrated artist.  Riopelle painted from about 1946 until his death in 2002, much of that time while living in Paris.  I was immediately taken by his work.  I don't know how to describe Abstract Expressionism other than with those words, it's abstract and certainly expressive.  It looks like blobs of multicolored paint hurled at the canvas wily nily, except that order and purpose is evident.  One writer described Riopelle's work thus:  "Lucious, lavishly generous dollops of exquisite impasto paint applied in dazzling configurations of form and colour."  

Then just recently a poetry magazine to which I subscribe (poetry and photography are close cousins) featured a few paintings of the American Abstract Expressionist, Jean Mitchell, a contemporary and close friend of Riopelle.  Wow, I was blown away!  Did she influence him, or he her? Their styles differed but their paintings were very similar.  I have since read her biography and spent time looking at her work in more detail.  I think everything said of Riopelle can be said of her.  While I can't say I understand what these artists are trying to express in their painting I can say that I like it.  Maybe it's the wild color, or maybe the free wheeling nature of this genre.  I wish I could provide a sample here, but to do so would violate copyright laws, so the best I can suggest is that if you want to see their work just "Google" their names and bingo.  

But what I can do is show you a sample from my own portfolio; the artist is Nature.  A few years ago Jean and I were at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.  This is a rather obscure park, overshadowed by Arizona's many other attractions, but certainly worth a visit. If you go there look very carefully because the real attraction will not just jump out at you.  It is one if the most wildly colorful places we've ever visited, but I fear many people don't see that color.  It's in the broken logs of petrified wood.  I hadn't "met" either Riopelle or Mitchell at that point, but if I had I would have immediately thought of them.  Those log ends are Nature's version of Abstract Expressionism.  I spent most of a morning looking for these works of art and photographing them.  I was the only one doing so.  Either no one cared, or more likely they just didn't see what I saw.  I like to think that the hours I've spent in galleries and studying photography have influenced my ability to see just a bit.

Here's just a sample of what I saw, and this might be a good preview for what you might see if you look up Jean Paul Riopelle and Joan Mitchell.  You will find other images like this one in my gallery, ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM IN NATURE in this site.