All art is abstract - sometimes it just happens to look like something recognisable. It is the balance of the two that makes for great representational art, take
Degas for example.
He just pushes wonderful designs of colour and tone into the realm of space and form as we know it, but barely. It is our own minds that flesh out the figure into a reproduction of reality.
And our own
Sharon Knettel
Sometimes, often, mere representation of a thing does not allow for a painting to sing. The artist might as well have been painting walls. And songs can be a lot more that just lullabies.