The Intelligence of the Unresolved
What if a painting is not meant to be solved, but to keep a question alive?
At the heart of abstraction lies a distinctly human impulse: the desire to make connections. We encounter fragments of experience—memories, sensations, observations and relationships—and continually attempt to form patterns from them. When something works, we remember it, build upon it and carry it forward. Yet repetition can never produce exactly the same result. Circumstances change; perception changes; experience changes. What we learn becomes the starting point for another question.
This process has a direct parallel within painting. A form, colour or gesture may suddenly establish a compelling relationship, but when the artist attempts to return to it, the conditions have already changed. The new work becomes a variation rather than a repetition. Discovery leads to further discovery.
For Melanie Berman, this becomes central to her understanding of relational abstraction. Forms retain their individual identities while their meaning is altered through proximity, tension, rhythm, scale and exchange. A circle remains a circle; a square remains a square; yet neither exists entirely alone. Meaning emerges between things.
A fragment, therefore, does not necessarily signify something broken. It can be a point of departure, a form capable of entering another relationship. Continuity need not be seamless either; it can be created through recurrence, interruption, variation and change.
There is, however, a paradox at the heart of creativity: the artist can prepare for the moment of discovery, but cannot manufacture it. Through attention, repetition, experimentation and accumulated experience, possibilities are gradually gathered. Yet the moment when they suddenly connect remains unpredictable. A colour encounters a form; a gesture finds its place; an unexpected space becomes essential. Something shifts, and the work appears to reveal a possibility that was not consciously known beforehand.
The pieces seem to fall into place, but they do not necessarily fall into an answer. ‘They fall into something unknown.’
Perhaps creativity resides not simply in inventing something from nothing, but in recognising an unexpected relationship when it appears. The artist can create the conditions for discovery, but must also remain receptive to what the work begins to suggest in return.
This idea extends beyond the studio. Human beings continually question, solve, adapt and learn. A successful discovery becomes knowledge, and knowledge becomes the starting point for another attempt. In this way, repetition itself produces difference. What has been learned is carried forward, but can never be reproduced under precisely the same conditions.
Ecological thought offers another way of considering this process. Rather than seeing the world as a collection of isolated entities, thinkers such as Timothy Morton emphasise relationships, exchange and interdependence. Jane Bennett similarly challenges the assumption that human intention alone determines what happens, drawing attention to the agency and vitality of material encounters.
These ideas resonate with Berman's paintings, where individual forms retain their distinctiveness while participating in a larger visual system. Relationship does not necessarily mean harmony. It can involve tension, resistance, distance and negotiation. A change in one part of the composition alters the possibilities elsewhere.
Nature, in this context, becomes less a subject to represent than a way of thinking about growth, adaptation, connection and change.
This leads to a broader understanding of evolution, not simply as progress towards a final or perfected state, but as continual becoming. We carry knowledge forward while circumstances change around us. We adapt what we know to what we have not yet encountered.
The same is true of the painting.
A work may be materially complete while remaining intellectually unresolved. The unresolved is not the same as unfinished. An unfinished work lacks something still required; an unresolved work can deliberately retain possibilities. It allows the viewer to make and remake connections, to recognise relationships and then question them again.
The viewer therefore becomes part of the work's process. Looking is not passive: the eye moves, compares, remembers and discovers. A painting encountered years later may seem different because the person looking at it has changed.
Perhaps this is the quiet intelligence of abstraction. It does not tell us what to think, but creates the conditions in which thinking can continue.
The painting becomes a meeting place between fragmentation and continuity, individuality and connection, certainty and possibility.
It does not offer a final answer.
Instead, it leaves something open.
And perhaps that is where creativity begins: in the moment when the pieces seem to fall into place, not revealing what we already knew, but allowing us to recognise something we did not yet know we were looking for.
‘The painting ends. The thinking does not.’