The Abstract Expressionism or Leftover Paint series began not as a deliberate artistic pursuit, but as a practical solution. When I started working with acrylics in 2017, I quickly learned that their greatest advantage — fast drying — was also a source of frustration. The paint left on the palette after each session hardened within minutes, and I hated seeing perfectly good paint go to waste. After one session, rather than discarding it, I took a small canvas board and spread the remaining paint across its surface with a palette knife. There was no plan, no image, no composition in mind — only the impulse to use whatever remained on the palette rather than throwing it away. The whole surface was covered after a few sessions and to my surprise, that accidental painting received more attention and appreciation than the works whose colours had given birth to it — the paintings for which those pigments had originally been mixed.
Since then, I always keep a separate canvas or sometimes multiple canvasses beside me whenever I paint. When a session ends, I use whatever remains on the palette to add a few more strokes or patches of colour to these canvases. Over time, these patches accumulate and fill the canvas — silent witnesses to other works, their palettes, and their moods. The finished Leftover Paint pieces are not made in a single act but grow gradually, sedimented through many sessions. When viewed alongside my other paintings, they reveal unexpected relationships: one can trace colours migrating across works, linking two seemingly unrelated paintings through a shared lineage of pigment.
The conceptual question behind this series fascinates me. The colours I mix are always created with intention — to serve a purpose in another image — yet when they find their way to the Leftover Paint canvas, they lose that original meaning and acquire a new one. Some viewers have told me they see cityscapes, crowds, or fields in these abstract patterns, though none were ever intended. This shows how our visual system strives to impose order on randomness, searching for structure even where none exists. Perhaps this is part of why we respond to abstract art with such curiosity and pleasure: it lets the mind do what it naturally does — to organize, imagine, and find coherence. One important aspect of this series is that these paintings cannot be commissioned or created on demand. Their existence depends entirely on the making of other works. They are both witnesses and measures of my practice — silent observers that trace the pulse of my working days, the quiet struggles that move beneath the surface of creation.
The origin of this series lies in a simple desire to reduce waste, and although we can attribute various conceptual meaning s retroactively, waste reduction that remains its most important message. The modern world produces more excess than we can meaningfully process, and even in the studio, it’s easy to forget that paint itself is a material resource. Reusing what would otherwise dry out and be discarded is both an act of conscience and a small protest against wastefulness.
The title of the series may invoke Abstract Expressionism, yet my relationship to that movement is more ironic than literal. In truth, my method for these paintings restricts expression rather than expand it. I use only what is left on the palette — colours chosen for another purpose — allowing very little freedom to remix or adjust. Yet as the sessions accumulate, this limitation dissolves to an extend, the fragments come together into something coherent, and the painting gains its own voice or expression.
There is a quiet paradox at the heart of this series: these works are made from what remains, yet they carry a sense of completeness. They are records of process, time, and continuity — reminders that even what is left behind can find new form.