I'm Charles Black — founder of ABB Collective and, for now, its first artist. Self-taught, New York, acrylic on canvas. Fifty-one originals in the catalogue, from 12 x 16 inches on paper up to an 11ft canvas, and a few more that have already found their homes.
Artist statement
Painting is my way of finding focus and expressing the complexities of my mind. Thought, like paint, is fluid — it shifts, transforms, and reacts. Add water, and it flows. Add fire, and it burns. Infuse love, and it radiates. Artistic expression brings clarity and fulfillment.
At my core, I am an artist shaped by experience rather than formal training. I have always found solace in honest expression — free from pressure or rigid purpose. Painting, for me, is about feeling and allowing creativity to unfold naturally.
Growing up in Manhattan with a psychologist for a father, I learned the value of empathy, self-awareness, and the complexities of human nature. My father often spoke about the duality of self — the version we show the world and the one we know internally. Art helps me navigate that intersection, embracing thought in its ever-evolving form.
As a teenager, I had a lot of friends in the graffiti scene but remained an observer until I started painting smiley faces around my neighborhood — my first act of creative expression. In college, I filled sketchbooks with doodles, finding comfort in the act itself. Later, working in sales, I doodled sketches during calls, filling notebooks at a vigorous pace with patterns and shapes. Eventually, I took a leap — buying canvases and paint with no specific plan, only the desire to explore.
What began as aimless doodling evolved into structured compositions and, ultimately, full-scale artwork. I constantly experiment with styles and techniques, allowing my work to evolve as my thoughts do.
Where it started
The first canvas was November 2017, 2am on a Saturday, black canvas and paint pens, and I had no idea where it was headed. It came out clumsy and all over the place, which felt right for a first one. I did a second the same weekend — white pen on black, every inch covered — just to see what the notebook looked like at that size. Two years later the same line went up at The Yard as four small panels called Thoughts on Canvas; they're hung two by two in someone's kitchen now. In 2024 it became Ruminating Thoughts, 4ft x 4ft. Everything on the floor now started with those two pens.
How I work
Canvases go down on the floor. Paint gets poured, flung from a stick, dragged with a board, or drawn on with markers, and I go with it — no intention going in, just layers. Sometimes I paint over an older piece and you can still find the first one underneath. When you paint from an emotional place, is a painting ever done? Probably when someone buys it.
Where the name came from
I started posting the work as @abstractbyblack — abstract art, and my last name. It stuck. Abstract By Black is where ABB Collective got its name.
Seen in
Three of my paintings hang in Erin Lichy's Tribeca apartment. Pendulum (No. 052, 6ft x 5ft) is the one in E! Online's tour of the place from February 2023, and the one on screen in season one of The Real Housewives of New York City. No. 040, a 10ft x 4ft black-and-white diptych, went there from the Mezcalum office this year and will be on screen in season three. Never Enough (No. 038, two panels) was the first to go there and hangs over the bed. More on all three.
Commissions
Yes. Tell me the wall, a size, a palette and when you need it: how it works, or charles.s.black@gmail.com.
