‘How do I love thee?’ wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She then goes on to list just how she does in her beautiful poem with the same title.

This post is not about poems at all. It is just that this morning a question popped up in my mind while looking at the paints and brushes scattered on my table. Why do I love painting abstracts? [A small technicality: My question starts with ‘why’ and not ‘how’.]

Like Miss Browning, whose next words are ‘Let me count the ways’, I too said to myself, ‘Let me count the reasons’. And that, my dear readers, is the only connection of her poem to this post!

So back to the all-important (to me!) question: Why do I love painting abstracts? Umm… for that matter, why do I write free verse?

Before going any further, let me digress a bit to tell you about an interesting observation someone once made. Free verse is ‘easy’ to write, they told me, with the unbelievable smugness of someone who has never ever written poetry. Apparently, to rhyme is harder and takes more effort. What was left unsaid, perhaps, was that free verse writers like me couldn’t hold a candle to them.

Absence of rules is not absence of effort.

It is my opinion that creating something coherent and meaningful without structural guidelines is immensely challenging. It is not as if you can just pull out random words, string them together and call it verse. The finished product has to convey an exact emotional frequency, a feeling, without the predictability of meter or rhyme.

Anyway, enough digression.

At first glance you might think abstract painting and free verse are two different things. Are they really? Also, why have I connected the two? Because the reason why I choose them over other forms is the same.

Let me count those reasons:

Freeing myself from structure.

Wanting to be more spontaneous.

Not wanting to ‘play by the rules.’

Perhaps there are more, but right now nothing else is suggesting itself.

Structure is something I abide by in life. I like knowing where things belong. In fact, I am even particular about keeping everything in its place. Woe betide anyone who moves my things. I find comfort in routines and in knowing what comes next. My days are mostly predictable.

Perhaps that is precisely why I find myself drawn to things that have no prescribed way of being.

When I sit with a blank canvas, I don’t want there to be a ‘right’ way to begin or end. I put down a colour simply because I like it. I make a mark without knowing where it is going to lead. I change my mind halfway through. I cover something up, paint over it or scrape it off, add another layer. In short, the painting is allowed to evolve as I go along.

Just like free verse, where only thoughts determine the lines and feelings determine the words.

So yes, I love them both, not because they are ‘easy’, but because they let me break the restraints that I have chosen to keep me bound.

©️ Shail Mohan 2026