Why I Make Art the Way I Do

Creating textured abstract wash art often leads me to geometric abstract art. This is because of a constant dilemma. As I paint, I wrestle with a core choice. Should I embrace the wash's initial structure? Or should I let the pigments flow freely? This decision dictates the final piece. Will it feel grounded and deliberate? Or will it be loose and spontaneous? These moments define the artwork’s essence. Intention meets emergent form.

This tension drives my art. Precision meets fluidity. Structure meets atmosphere. It is not a technique. This is a conversation I have with every canvas. I converse with every layer. I converse with every wash of color.

Where the Shapes Come From

Geometry has always pulled me in. Not the cold, clinical kind you find in textbooks — but the living geometry hidden inside the world around us. Skylines. Scaffolding. Bridges. The quiet order tucked inside everyday spaces most people walk past without a second glance.

When I look at a city, I see more than just buildings. I see a dynamic interplay of shapes. Rectangles stack upon rectangles. Triangles slice into the sky. Arches gracefully frame the light. Everywhere, I notice repeating ratios and rhythms. These echo across rooftops and within floor plans. This visual language grounds my geometric abstract art series.

Structure Giving Way to Atmosphere

My process always starts with clean geometric forms. Hard edges. Clear boundaries. A kind of order that feels almost architectural in itself.

Then I let the watercolour layers in.

In Adobe Photoshop, I build washes of color. They soften edges. They blur boundaries. These washes breathe around forms. Warm oranges and teal blues bleed into each other. Rigid shapes begin to glow. Structure becomes atmosphere. It feels like this.

That push and pull is the heart of my creative process. I build, erase, wash, and rebuild until the piece finds its own balance between clarity and motion. Between the city and the sky.

You can see this tension in my Architectural Watercolour Series. The built world dissolves into color and light.

Why Geometry in Geometric Abstract Art Can Feel Alive

I find deep satisfaction in fixed forms. A rectangle, a roofline, a grid. These forms can still drift. They can still glow. They can still move.

That's what watercolour does to geometry. It doesn't destroy the structure. It reveals something softer living inside it.

The shapes in my work come from everywhere. A skyline glimpsed through a train window. The shadow a scaffold throws across a wall at dusk. The floor plan of a building I'll never visit. Photoshop becomes the place where all of those influences can shift, overlap, and transform into something new.

I'm not aiming to simply depict cities. I strive to capture the *feeling* of urban environments. It's how light dances across hard surfaces. Colors gather in different spaces. Even rigid structures can evoke a sense of warmth.

Making Art That Moves

That's why I make art the way I do.

Not because geometric forms are easy — they're not. Not because watercolour is forgiving — it rarely is. But because the tension between the two produces something I can't get any other way. A kind of aliveness. A sense that the structure is breathing.

Have you stood in a city at dusk? Did you feel a shift? The light changes. Shapes soften. The scene becomes more than its parts. That is the feeling I chase in every piece.

I hope you can feel it too.

— Phillip J Gordon

Behind the art — building soft watercolour city light in Adobe Photoshop. Every layer tells a story.