The Narrative Eye: How Viewers Complete the Abstract Image

When I held my recent art exhibition, something quietly profound unfolded before me. As guests moved through the space, I began to notice how the more abstract works - those untethered from clear landscapes or recognisable forms - sparked the most conversation. Not just about the artworks themselves, but about the places they conjured in memory.

Some visitors saw Coromandel beaches in the layered textures. Others found themselves in the dry contours of Californian hills. Still others spoke of distant Canadian lakes. These interpretations weren’t prompted or suggested - they emerged naturally, uninvited yet welcome. The artworks, in a way, were being completed by the viewer.

This is one of the most fascinating aspects of abstract image-making: it invites personal narrative. Without the constraints of a specific place or moment, the work becomes a kind of mirror - offering not a reflection, but a space. A space into which the viewer can pour their own stories, landscapes, and longings.

It’s as though the abstraction removes the artist’s voice just enough to allow the viewer’s voice in. And what a rich chorus it becomes. A single piece of fabric photographed with a slow shutter becomes, depending on who is looking, the swell of a wave, the arc of a hill, or the shimmer of heat rising off summer asphalt. The ambiguity is not a lack - it’s an offering.

There’s something deeply human in this instinct to project meaning. We do it with clouds, with music, with the passing expressions on strangers’ faces. Abstract art simply gives us the same opportunity with more intent. It opens a door, and quietly steps aside.

This experience has changed the way I think about my own work. I no longer see the image as something fixed, something to be “read” correctly. Instead, I see it as a conversation - one that doesn’t begin with me, but continues through the imagination of others.

In the end, perhaps that’s the real gift of abstraction: not that it says nothing, but that it makes room for everything.