abstract emotions

My second project of my IB-art course in school

Painted in acrylics, oil bars and oil pastels (actually it is a rather big piece)

i got the idea while watching two schoolmates sitting on a sofa in a coffee shop.
Abstract art is not really my style, but i like experimenting with something new.
Personally, i would not put this one on my wall; the colours are too bright for me. But they seemed to fit with this concept.


What does it represent?
Well, if you look at the painting you can see a man & a woman sitting on a sofa in front of a vivacious background. But it isn’t as simple as that. It seems like the background is moving. On the side of the man the swirls are still simple. But as they start to move towards the woman, the swirls develop into more complex & colourful ones. This represents the attraction of the man to the woman; each colour stands for different emotions (i suppose everyone could interpret this differently, but this is what I wanted to express):
red: love, desire
yellow: jealousy, excitement
blue: pain & passion
green: affection, devotion

The people are a dark colour which mean it is difficult to see their emotions deep inside of them. They are faceless – I rather wanted to concentrate on body language. Even if those figures are not realistic, they still express the concept. The way the man sits seems so relaxed, but the truth is, he is pretty nervous about the woman sitting next to him. And she pretends not to notice him and sits in a ladylike position. They sit at opposite ends of the sofa, however they can’t deny the attraction between them.