Abstract Art / Jasmine Piacquadio
Straight out of Melbourne, Jasmine Piacquadio shares a colourful series of digital artworks, along with a short statement of her own philosophy of art and the practice of making it. Writing about her own artwork, Jasmine describes it as abstract in both style and method. Her approach to art making is highly intuitive, organic, and determined as much by the tools as by her own intentions. In similarly biotic terms, she writes about a deep self-reflection of ‘growth’ and ‘healing’ which influenced her approach to making art.
Jasmine explains how her idealisations about the future used to limit how she operated in the present. This form of procrastination crippled her ability to simply make art. Abstract art allowed Jasmine to remove these self-imposed boundaries and to operate on a completely unpredictable level “dictated by the mistakes” instead of achievement. Jasmine further explains that art is "an accumulation of time and space" that culminates in the finished artwork, where variations of the environment in which the artwork is made influence the artwork's form. Similar to how an ocean wind dramatically effects the shape a tree’s body develops. She concludes by encouraging us to accept the abstract nature of reality instead of ignoring it, in the hope we live more content lives free from expectation and disappointment.
The following is by Jasmine.
My artistic process has developed from a place of healing and self-growth. For a long time, a ‘perfectionist’ attitude held me back from creating in all its forms (social, academic, artistic, etc.). I had a perfect vision of the life and creativity that I wanted around me but would be frustrated and self-sabotaging when I couldn’t execute it first go. As I found my passion and niche of style within art, I’ve come to learn that creating things of a high standard does not come straight away as you need to work towards what you want to achieve by teaching yourself new skills and techniques in order to execute your visions.
My artistic process taught me that you have to be forgiving of yourself and work with mistakes in order to complete a work which satisfies the inner perfectionist (which I’ve learnt to work with rather than let it rule me). My current work is actually often dictated by the mistakes that I’ve made whist drawing. A lot of the time the shapes, orientation, thickness of the lines, etc., are actually determined by the notion of correcting, fixing, mending; and working with ‘mistakes’ rather than removing them or starting a new work all together. This is yet another reason why I love abstract art so much; because an error is never an error and there is never a perfect way to execute an abstract artwork. To me, abstract art has the same principles of life itself, and from my experience, being able to let myself freely create abstract art, I’ve become a more awakened and conscious person with a higher, healthier and happier mental health status and life.
