What Is Abstract Realism? The Bridge Between Dreams and Reality in Art
- Nov 7, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 22, 2025
Edited: Nov 25, 2025
Hello! I’m Naïma, a professional Fine Artist based in the south of France. I create paintings inspired by feminine energy, nature, and the wild spirit. Welcome to my website, art gallery. (Discover my latest paintings here)
Art is a living language, a bridge between what we see and what we feel. Among all the styles that explore this delicate space, Abstract Realism stands out as one of the most fascinating to me. It is the meeting point between form and emotion, between the visible world and the invisible soul.
In this post, I’ll share what abstract realism truly means, how it emerged through art history, how painters like the Pre-Raphaelites and Impressionists unknowingly opened the path for it, and how this style resonates deeply with my own feminine, nature-inspired paintings.
What Is Abstract Realism?
Abstract Realism merges two artistic languages that once seemed opposite: Realism and Abstraction.
In this style, the subject remains recognizable: a woman, an animal, a landscape, but it is infused with expressive colors, movement, and symbolism. The artist no longer seeks only to imitate the world, but to express what lies beneath its surface: emotion, energy, and spirit.
Abstract realism is both grounded and ethereal. It shows the world not as the eye sees it, but as the heart experiences it. Naïma Namaste
A Brief History: From Realism to Abstraction
The roots of abstract realism can be traced to the early 20th century, when artists began breaking away from the strict rules of academic art.
Wassily Kandinsky explored how color could express inner emotion.
Georgia O’Keeffe painted flowers and bones that were both realistic and dreamlike, revealing a world between abstraction and symbolism.
Gerhard Richter blurred the line between photography and abstraction, while Odd Nerdrum sought emotional truth through classical technique.
But if we look closer, the seeds of abstract realism were planted even earlier — in the Pre-Raphaelite and Impressionist movements.
The Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Symbolic Realism
Long before abstraction had a name, the Pre-Raphaelites (like John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and J.W. Waterhouse) painted with a devotion to both realism and emotion.
They captured every detail, the shimmer of fabric, the light on water, the softness of a woman’s skin yet their paintings carried a mystical, symbolic energy. The wind, the flowers, the background often became abstract fields of feeling rather than literal scenes.
In Waterhouse’s Boreas, for example, the figure is rendered with breathtaking realism, but the movement of the wind and landscape dissolves into expressive brushwork. It’s as if the environment breathes carrying the energy of emotion rather than photographic truth. That is the reason I wanted to re create this painting in my own voice and process:
That tension between precision and atmosphere makes their work an early form of abstract realism. It’s realism touched by soul. Naïma Namaste
The Impressionist Connection: The Poetry of Perception
The Impressionists continued this transformation. Artists like Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Berthe Morisot began to paint light itself, allowing color, movement, and atmosphere to take precedence over detail.
Monet’s Water Lilies, for instance, borders on abstraction. Up close, it’s a symphony of brushstrokes and color; from afar, it becomes a living pond. This dance between form and feeling shaped the visual language that modern abstract realists continue to explore today.
Their art invites us not just to see, but to feel to perceive the world through emotion, intuition, and presence. These artists have deeply inspired me in my own artist journey.
How These Artists Inspire My Work
Both the Pre-Raphaelites and the Impressionists have deeply influenced my own journey as a painter.
As a child from Normandy, I grew up surrounded by the landscapes that inspired Monet. Later, I visited his home and garden in Giverny, an experience that reawakened my love for color, wild nature, and the way light moves through flowers.
At the same time, I’ve always felt drawn to Waterhouse and his portrayal of feminine spirit, ethereal women, sacred landscapes, and the invisible energy that surrounds them. When I recreated Boreas in my own way, I filled the background with wildflowers and roses instead of daffodils letting nature’s wild feminine energy speak more freely.
From the Pre-Raphaelites’ poetic realism to Monet’s luminous abstraction, the story of art has always been a story of connection between what we see and what we feel.
My own path as an artist continues this lineage: painting women, nature, and emotion as one living energy, where realism meets spirit, and where abstraction becomes a language of the heart.
If you feel like you want to start painting or simply creating, I made a free guide for you! Download your Free Guide to unlock your feminine creativity
Naïma
Follow me on instagram.com/naimanamaste
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