Let the Thing Become What It's Becoming

I've loved abstract art longer than I've sold it. There's a particular pleasure in standing in front of a piece that refuses to hand you a subject — no coastline, no figure, nothing to point to — and doing the work of figuring out what it's saying anyway. Then, if you're lucky, checking whether what you found actually resonates with you, or whether you were just talking yourself into something. That challenge is why abstract work moves me differently than almost anything else on a gallery wall. It's a large part of why I brought Deanna Schuerbeke into Nicart in the first place.

Her paintings are not subtle about grabbing you. They're big — forty by sixty inches, fifty-six by forty-eight, the kind of scale that fills your field of vision rather than sitting politely inside it. The color is bold, saturated, sometimes almost loud. The line is expressive, fast, confident. You do not stand in front of a Schuerbeke and feel nothing. That reaction is instant and it is real, and it's the single biggest reason her work stopped me the first time I saw it.

So when I sat down this summer to write descriptions for her first nineteen pieces with Nicart, I want to be honest about what the actual job was — because it wasn't convincing anyone the work had merit. The merit is not in question. It's undeniable the moment you look. For each piece, Deanna sent me the title, the dimensions, and a few sentences in her own words — what she'd been chasing, what it meant to her. Then it was my job to sit with the image and force myself to actually take the journey her eye had already taken across the canvas. Follow the lines. Watch what the color and the negative space and the brushwork were doing to the feeling in the room. Ask whether a mark was intentional or whether she'd simply let the paint run — and if it was intentional, ask why, and what that choice was doing to the emotion underneath it. Ask whether the piece resolves itself, or leaves you hanging, or releases you softly, or pulls you in deeper the longer you stay. Done right, it's genuinely exhausting — you can't skim it. But that's the whole job: taking a title, a handful of her words, and the painting, and building language substantial enough that a collector who's never stood in the room with the actual canvas can still feel what it's doing. ABOVE PHOTO: Searching, Acrylic on Canvas, 40" x 40"

I've watched this exact pattern play out for years, across more galleries and museums than I can count — and it never starts with indifference. People walk up to bold non-representational work and something happens immediately. Eyes widen. A step back to take in the scale. That's beat one, and it's the easiest part of looking at abstract art — the painting does that part for you.

What I've watched go wrong happens right after. The viewer gets the jolt, doesn't know what to do with it, and — because nobody ever taught them there's a next question — lets it fade. “Wow, that's bold” turns into a shrug two seconds later, and they move to the next wall having felt something real and thrown it away, because they had no way to turn that first reaction into actual understanding. That's not a failure of taste on their part. It's a translation gap. And closing that gap — between what a piece is doing and what a person standing in front of it actually understands about why — is the job. It's my job specifically: dealer, agent, gallery owner, and collector, standing between the commercial art world and the person who just wants to know why this painting won't let them look away. ABOVE PHOTO: New Growth, Acrylic on Canvas, 50" x 50"

Somewhere in the middle of writing those nineteen descriptions, Deanna posted something on her own page — not written for me, not written for the collection, just a thought she needed to get down that day. Look with a less judgmental eye. Let the thing become what it's becoming.

That's the second half of the equation, in one sentence, from the person who actually makes the work. The jolt gets you in the door. What happens next is you staying long enough to let the piece keep talking — past the first four seconds, past “bold,” into whatever it's actually built to say.

Finally (LEFT) is the piece I keep coming back to — fittingly, since it was the last description of the nineteen I wrote. Fifty-six by forty-eight inches, acrylic, built from three colors and nothing else: teal, orange, and gold. “Painting this was extremely cathartic,” Deanna told me. “I picked my favorite colors and just drew from raw energy. This one feels like a big and welcoming storm.”

That's the jolt — the emotional hit — and you feel it before you've thought about a single brushstroke. But the painting that actually earns its title only reveals itself once you follow the paint. Teal sweeps broad and saturated across the top and center of the canvas, then thins into drips toward the bottom edge, like the last scattered showers after a storm has already spent itself. And then there's the detail that changed how I understood the whole piece: the orange and gold aren't breaking through the teal from behind, the way light breaks through parting clouds. They're laid on top. Applied afterward.

That's not a small technical note. It's the entire painting. The sunshine didn't precede the storm — it arrived after. The warmth wasn't sitting there all along, waiting to break through. It was earned. Finally isn't a painting about anticipating relief, or about enduring hardship. It's the moment on the other side of both — the satisfied sigh after hard work, the self-pat on the back a person allows themselves only once the thing is actually, finally, done.

I didn't know any of that the first time I looked at the painting. I only knew it once I let the thing become what it was becoming.

You're going to feel the jolt. Bold color and huge scale will always do that, and there's nothing to figure out about that part — just let it happen. The work starts after. Notice where your eye goes and why it won't sit still. Notice what the surface tells you about the hand that made it — and, like the gold laid over the teal in Finally, notice what order things happened in, because that order is often the meaning. Then ask the harder question: what does this piece want from you, standing in the room with it? What is it going to become, the longer you actually stay?

That's the whole difference between a painting you admire for four seconds and one that changes what a room feels like for the next twenty years. Deanna's first collection with Nicart — including Finally — is up now. Let yourself get grabbed. Then don't leave it there.

View Deanna's Collection HERE

What's a piece of art that grabbed you instantly — and then took you somewhere you didn't expect once you actually stayed with it? Tell us by replying in the comments below.

~Nicole Graham

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