By Darla McCammon and Darlene Romano

Pictured is “After Darkly Noon” by Viggo Mortensen.

“To be an artist, you don’t have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It’s just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.”

The quote above, by Viggo Mortensen, speaks to his idea that what constitutes an artist isn’t something that is tied to any particular level of training or education, but rather to the way a person exists in the world. As an American actor, writer, director, producer, musician, and multimedia artist, Mortensen understands that the way he observes the world translates into his work as an artist.

Mortensen was born Oct. 20, 1958, in Watertown, N.Y., to an American mother and a Danish father. Mortensen developed an interest in both photography and painting early in life, and his paintings have been featured in galleries worldwide. His paintings are often abstract and he incorporates his poetry into many of his pieces. His abstract piece titled “After Darkly Noon” is an example of how he utilities his poetry to enhance his paintings. In the bottom left corner of the piece, you will see a portion of one of his poems.

Mortensen states that when he began the painting, “it was quite a bit different, more one-dimensional. The elements were separated” and as he has worked more on it, “there are more layers and more information that matter to me, so it’s become a living journal. There are words, thoughts and images in there that I haven’t written down.” Because he is so busy, he is forced to leave paintings unfinished and come back to them, and he believes this is a fortunate thing because the paintings become something that he never would have created in one sitting.

Many viewers, myself included, have trouble appreciating abstract art and finding any meaning in it. When observing an abstract piece, prepare yourself to look beyond the things you already know and are familiar with. According to the website art-mine.com, abstract art is “the capability of the artist to use their imagination to look beyond what we can physically see and translate intangible emotions onto the canvas. It is also the ability of the audience to then try to connect to the artist’s intention and free their own mind of visual restrictions.”

When observing a painting, ask yourself how the piece makes you feel. Does it conjure feelings of happiness, melancholy, or even anger? What do you see in the painting? State the obvious and then dig deeper. For example, in Mortensen’s painting “After Darkly Noon,” I see what looks like the outlines of a tree, with the roots at the bottom left of the page and the trunk and branches spreading up and then out toward the right. In the top left quadrant of the painting, there is a circle inside of a square, and to me that represents the moon, so I see a tree in the moonlight. The warm colors of pinks and yellows are juxtaposed against the cool blues and purples which creates tension and grabs the attention of the viewer.

So in my mind, the painting is no longer a mystery, but just a creative image of a tree in the moonlight. Not all abstract paintings can be interpreted as easily as this one, and there are many other layers and dimension to this painting than just a tree in the moonlight, but this at least gives me something to appreciate about the image that I can relate to. I hope you find things in the painting that you enjoy as well.