Modern Abstract Art for Contemporary & Luxury Homes
A great abstract does something no other painting can: it sets the entire mood of a room without ever telling you what to think. After fifty years of painting — landscapes, florals, everything between — the abstracts are where I feel most free, and it shows. They're vivid, layered, and unapologetic. If you're looking for original modern abstract art with real presence — not safe, beige hotel art — this is where to start.
My abstracts share DNA with my mountain landscapes: confident colour, strong composition, a graphic eye I first trained during twenty years as an architectural illustrator. And they're shaped by where I work. The light in Alberta is hard, clean and high-contrast, and it's pushed my palette the same way — saturated colour, sharp edges, nothing muddy. Solar Flare is the clearest example: warm oranges and yellows clashing and blending with cool shadows, chaotic and harmonious at once.
How they're built
I work in latex-acrylic — a heavier-bodied paint than studio acrylic — with straight and angled brushes, never a knife. The paint holds the mark, so up close you can read the direction and pressure of every stroke, and the layers build into ridges that catch the light instead of sitting flat. That surface is the difference between an abstract that's printed and an abstract that's painted, and it's why these need to be seen in person to be fully believed.
What an abstract does for a room
Designers reach for abstraction because it's the most flexible art there is: it pulls a palette together, fills a large wall without competing with the furniture, and never locks a room to one subject or era. One rule I give collectors — go bigger than instinct suggests. A statement piece above a sofa should span about two-thirds of it. Fractals — yellow, red and white over a deep red ground — is the piece I'd point you to first; it's one of the few abstracts still available in the store.
When the painting becomes the furniture
Some of my abstracts don't hang at all. With my son I build one-of-a-kind resin art tables — an original painting sealed under a glass-smooth resin top. Monarch Migration, inspired by the great butterfly migration, lives in the middle of a room as furniture and centrepiece at once. Eye Candy and the Koy Fish Side Stand are the other two currently looking for homes.
Every abstract is a one-of-a-kind original — once it sells, it's gone, though select pieces are available as signed and numbered canvas giclées in a limited edition of 95. And if what your room needs is a specific palette at a specific scale, that's a commission, and it's a conversation I always enjoy. Start it here. — Martin