Abstract Mark-Making | Journey to Abstraction

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For artist Cory Goulet, the challenge of working in the abstract is a raw revealing of herself – both on paper and to her viewers

This abstract painting demonstration is an excerpt from a full profile on artist Cory Goulet, written by Rebecca Dvorak and featured in the October 2020 issue of Pastel Journal,

Cory Goulet starts every piece by turning on a CD in her studio. She lets the energy of the music course through her body, moving and dancing in front of her blank canvas. She listens to favorites like Nina Simone or Aretha Franklin—strong voices with upbeat tempos. Only then does she begin projecting her energy onto the canvas, working intuitively to paint, layer and create. Her work is deeply abstract. “You have to create some-thing out of nothing,” Goulet says.

Color is often her guide as she starts. “I love color, and in most of my work I use bright, bold colors,” says the artist. Sometimes she’ll start with a few pre-selected colors that lead her in a particular direction. “Other times, it’s just grab and go, and I build from there. I like to keep it loose,” she says.

Goulet works in larger formats when she can as they lend a sense of freedom to the full-body movements she employs while painting. She wants her art to start a conversation, not tell a narrative. She aims to convey a feeling in her pieces and tries to paint from a place of positivity so that dark emotions don’t creep into her work. She tries to keep her pieces unique and organic, conveying a sense of movement or energy.

Goulet is particularly thoughtful about not priming her viewers when she titles her pieces, avoiding anything that might hint at the concrete. She embraces the subjectivity of abstraction. “I want people to talk about my work—what they see and how they feel about it. I want them to share their reactions in the moment and then again, later,” she says. This sharing and learning has been vital to Goulet’s artistic career and development.

Process

Once Goulet is warmed up and moving with her music, she typically begins with a bright red- or orange-toned sheet of gritty UART paper, though she frequently tries new papers to see how they work. Then she’ll use water or alcohol to blend color into the paper with light and loose strokes of a paintbrush, rag or sponge. Next, she begins blocking in shapes of color and making marks with various sizes of charcoal.

She’ll add a spritz of alcohol or water for effect throughout the process as she layers in more colors, using a variety of pastels, including Unison Colour Pastels, Diane Townsend Terrage, Girault, Jack Richeson, Art Spectrum and Terry Ludwig, as well as pastel pencils, to create the contrasting broken and unbroken lines of her compositions. “I think the use of pencil or inks and gesso makes the work more interesting. Gesso helps lay color on color and adds texture and depth to my work,” she says.

As she works, Goulet often rotates the paper and then steps back to see how the different elements of the piece are connecting to ensure that she’s maintaining a keen sense of energy on the paper. She asks herself whether the colors are working in harmony and whether the lines and shapes create interesting relationships with each other.

Demonstration | Abstract Mark-Making

This abstract painting demonstration is an excerpt from a full profile on artist Cory Goulet, written by Rebecca Dvorak and featured in the October 2020 issue of Pastel Journal,