What Abstract Art Can Teach Us About Seeing

A recent visit to the Harvard Art Museums left me thinking about how artists gradually peeled away layers of representation to get closer to something essential.

Our students moved through the galleries with sketchbooks in hand, studying everything from representational paintings to contemporary abstract works. Along the way, we received an unexpected stream of compliments. A museum guard remarked on how thoughtfully even our youngest students were engaging with the artwork. A visitor commented on how wonderful it was to see children being introduced to modern and contemporary art at such an early age. A tourist from Japan spoke passionately about the importance of helping young people develop a different way of looking at the world in an age increasingly dominated by screens and digital distractions.

What struck me most wasn't the praise itself, but the reminder that children often approach art with an openness many adults have forgotten. They aren't worried about whether they're "getting it right." They don't need an explanation before allowing themselves to respond. They simply look, notice, wonder, and engage.

The experience echoed something I've been thinking about in the studio.

Lately, I've been teaching children, teens, and adults to paint the base layers first—to fill in the air before all the objects that initially catch our attention begin to occupy the space. It's a much harder task than it sounds: stripping things down to their essence, establishing the main values, and letting go of the details we love in the hope that they will return later with even greater prominence.

Looking at the work of Helen Frankenthaler and learning about the artists who followed her lead into Color Field painting has been eye-opening. At the museum, I was particularly fascinated by Amy Sillman, who would sketch people in their surroundings and then return to the studio to paint the scenes from memory. In the process, she would abstract away the particulars, distilling what she had seen into its essential forms. A person might eventually become a shape as simple as the letter "L." What remained wasn't a faithful record of reality, but the memory of an experience—the feeling of having been there. Kandinsky began that shift by reducing the world to shapes, color, and emotion. Color Field painters took it a step further. They stripped away the embroidery and exposed the raw walls beneath. What's left is presence itself: large expanses of color meeting one another, creating a response that bypasses logic and speaks directly to emotion.

The more I learn about abstraction, the more I wonder whether children understand it better than adults. Adults often stand in front of an abstract painting searching for answers. What is it supposed to be? What does it mean? Why did the artist leave so much out?

Children tend to accept things more readily. A shape can simply be a shape. A color can evoke a feeling. A memory can be more important than a perfectly rendered object. Perhaps that's why Picasso said, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."

The quote used to puzzle me. The older I get, the more I understand it. Children have a remarkable ability to see what matters without feeling compelled to explain it. They trust their intuition. They respond before they analyze. And maybe that's exactly what so many abstract artists were trying to return to—not less sophistication, but a more direct way of seeing.

At the Plein-Air Art Academy, our art classes, museum visits, and summer art camps in Brookline combine art history, creative thinking, and hands-on studio practice to help children build confidence, resilience, and a lifelong relationship with creativity.