What it argues
Abstract Painting is a practical handbook for painters who want to move beyond representation and learn to work with color, form, and gesture on their own terms. Filiou's approach is instructional without being prescriptive — she gives exercises, techniques, and frameworks, but the underlying message is that abstract painting cannot be reduced to a formula. The goal is to help painters develop their own visual language by building a working vocabulary of mark-making, composition, and surface.
The book covers a wide range of approaches within the broad category of "abstract" — from hard-edge geometry and color field to gestural expressionism and mixed media. Filiou walks through the properties of different media (acrylic, oil, watercolor, mixed), the behavior of color in non-representational contexts, and the principles of pictorial space when there is no figure-ground relationship to fall back on. Each chapter builds on the previous one without requiring a linear read.
What it gets right
- 1.
Abstract painting is not the absence of skill but a different application of it — composition, color relationships, and surface tension matter as much as in representational work.
- 2.
Process over intention: responding to what is happening on the canvas produces more interesting results than executing a predetermined plan.
- 3.
Accidents and unexpected marks are raw material, not mistakes. Learning to work with them rather than correct them is central to developing an abstract practice.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Valérie Filiou is a French-born painter and art educator whose work spans abstract painting, mixed media, and artist books. She has taught painting and drawing at art institutions in Europe and contributed to several instructional publications on contemporary painting techniques. Her own practice centers on gestural abstraction with an emphasis on process and material response. Abstract Painting reflects her teaching approach: rigorous about fundamentals, open about outcomes, and committed to helping painters build an independent studio practice rather than replicate a specific style.
