Some painters cram so much into an abstract painting that the elements squirt and pulse and wriggle against each other gelatinously, searching for space.

Some abstract painters engineer a lot into a painting with the precision of a fine watch movement. Tightly-packed elements whiz and whirr and hum together harmoniously. 

Some painters space the elements distantly. The casually sprayed, dashed, brushed, and/or drawn elements call to one another from across the canvas, or sit alone in their territory. You study these paintings like spare diagrams, desert maps, or carefully dissected animals. 

What do each of these abstract painting approaches say about the way their painters experience and perceive life?

Do the crammists feel the claustrophobia they depict, physically or socially or emotionally? Is there a relationship between their paintings and their own abdominal cavities, crammed tight with organs that blurp and slosh and slither against each other? Or is it that their lives are empty, lonely, dry, and they paint the world they desire?

Are the engineers working from an internal aptitude developed in adolescence, a need to keep things clear and clean and squared-away, a delight in machined perfection? Are they reflecting their world in their art, or is their art the one place where they can experience the precision and predictability they see missing in the world at large?

The dry diagrammists: how do they see their world? With no chance of collision, or even of touching between unlike elements, have they made a place without conflict or tension, or at least a place where conflict and tension are tightly regulated? Was there a lot of fighting at home, growing up? Are these artists contemporary abstraction’s middle children?