Throughout Mondrian’s career, he had many influences, the
first being spirituality. He aimed to distil the real world to its pure
essence, to represent the contrasts of the universe in eternal tension. He was
also heavily influenced by cubism in his early work, but moved beyond the
Cubists’ degree of abstraction. His studies of trees moved more towards abstraction
with geometric shapes and interlocking planes. Finally, he moved towards the De
Stijl movement, founding De Stijl, a journal of the De Stijl group with Van
Doesburg and following the use of Primary colours of Van der Leck.
His De Stijl artwork originated from looking at nature and
this has inspired my work on both taking nature to its first principles and by
making natural creations mechanical. By ignoring the detail and concentrating
on the mood something portrays, Mondrian has allowed such organic things to be
so regimented, yet it does not feel artificial. This has influenced me to look
beyond an image or a scene and, at first, just focus on the basic outline.
