Page 28 - Studio International - September 1966

must contemplate within the rectangle, must wait for the The resultant drawing is 'going to become the vehicle
close tonalities to differentiate themselves and work their for colour and emotion'. The heart of each painting,
way across in a fluid interplay beneath the painted lines. then, is a specific impetus from origins that he cannot
Stability is essential to the subdued repose of Stroud's begin to analyse. Nor does he feel he must. His attitude
paintings. His concern with symmetry is always operat- toward his work is summed up in a quotation from
ing, even when he subdivides his whole into what he Thomas Mann, scribbled into a notebook he desultorily
calls 'units of similar aspect'. keeps: 'Thought that can merge wholly into feeling;
Yet, as he observes, the structure of symmetry is never feeling that can merge wholly into thought-these are the
absolute. When he lays a strip down which states the artist's highest joy.' q
edge of a plane, he destroys the symmetry of the ground
plane. When movement occurs in colour transitions he Two problems have concerned me recently. First to find
minimizes the symmetry of congruent planes. The whole an image form which is almost anonymous, and second a
nevertheless is ever greater than the parts in his work. means of breaking down this same image internally in as
unobtrusive a manner as possible. The corner reduced
While some of his thought is given to structure analysis,
rectangle with the interior divided orthogonally seemed
his basic approach is largely intuitive. Geometry as such
the best solution for me. But a different sort of space was
has no place in his reflections. Any kind of mathematical
needed, a space where the sense of surrounding edge
calculation is foreign to his temperament as a painter.
was reduced to the minimum so that inside and outside
His emblematic imagery is worked out in drawings-
were in exchange and an integral part of the total form-
black and white drawings only-that evolve with as much gestalt.
`process' as any lyrical painter's. 'I draw obsessively until
Eight across the centre 1966
Oil on canvas a certain motif emerges or re-emerges, or redefines itself Peter Stroud
63 x 852 in. and becomes almost agressive in its demand to be used.' July 1966