My view of art has expanded significantly, and unsurprisingly, since I first started being an artist. With my work, I've danced the dance between realism and abstract art, starting out with the preconceived notion that realism, for its more established provenance, had a stronger claim to my devotion. However, part of my maturing into an artist was making the realization that I draw more to express feelings than taking down the facts- letting the emotions overflow and take me to places that don't exist in this physical world. It's probably a reflection on how I think of things, in general- unnamed possibilities contain more facination than concrete details.
On the other hand, abstraction works much in the same way Rorshach tests do- you make whatever you want out of what you're seeing. It doesn't have to be a person, place or thing- it just is. Such an approach to creation can become disorienting and a bit over-reliant on happy accidents than actual deliberate skill; but such is the risk you take when creating or looking at art in the first place. One thing that I have had trouble with is admitting how often my emotions take me far away from what I've originally envisioned for a project; but I would rather this randomness then to know exactly what I'm going to put on paper, every single time. In addition, I'm starting to discover that expressionism is often one of the best things to start teaching students, due to its stronger connection to the experience of pure drawing and the naked unconscious.
So, realism anchors, abstraction frees. Both styles are needed and should be appreciated for exactly what they are. And they both helped to form me.