Why "the Abstracted Artist"?

Merriam-Webster Online defines the adjective abstracted as "expressing a quality apart from the object". As an artist, whether I'm writing or taking pictures, I look for those things, those elements, those qualities that are not inherently obvious. I want to look deeply at something and try to find its inner being, I want to capture something fleeting, something that will never be seen or thought of again. I look at the shape of things, at the contours, at the colors and contrasts, and sometimes I like to strip these things away to the bare existential form.