Page 36 - Studio International - February 1974

Complicated Green and Violet, March 1972
Oil on canvas, 72 x 120 in.
Exhibited at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1972;
Boython Gallery, Sydney, 1973

difficult to pinpoint. In these large recent welcome by-product, not a calculated end-
paintings such as this Cadmium with Violet one is product. I end by saying that I've no idea how my next
extremely conscious, as one's eye moves along But perhaps the most startling thought that large paintings are going to look. I can tell you
the frontiers of the various areas, that these came to me during this recent period of very that the last to date are the most complex of all :
areas actually alternate with one another (as large paintings — paintings like Dark Red, Complicated Green and Violet: March 1972 and
one's eye moves) in seeming to be behind or in Scarlet and Venetian: February 1972, where Big Cobalt Violet: May 1972 are the most
front of one another — according to whatever once again the right-hand edge has attracted to complex canvases I've painted since 1955. The
loop or angle in the frontier one happens to be itself all the complex elements in the painting, mileage of their frontiers between colours is
focusing upon. For instance, the cadmium-red leaving these to be balanced only by the heavy certainly the greatest yet. And in Big Cobalt
ground (if you'll excuse the term) does not emptiness of the red which entirely fills two- Violet there are no less than three instances of
appear to be uniformly either behind or in front thirds of the canvas on the left — perhaps the the linear 'overlapping' of areas. Yet even as I
of the more orange 'harbour-shape' which most unexpected conscious thought was this . . . contemplate the complex interlocking of
extends downwards from the top right-hand the linear character of the frontiers can change emerald and scarlet in this painting, I am
corner of the painting. On the contrary, as your the colour of colours. This is how I put it in seized yet again by a sense of the inadequacy, of
eye slides round those outlines the cadmium and `Colour in my painting: 1969' : the inevitable inaccuracy of my own Words;
the orange appear to keep exchanging their `. . . the meeting-lines between areas of colour once again, there is a need to qualify what I have
spatial positions. In 'Colour in my Painting : are utterly crucial to our apprehension of the only just said . . . It is not the 'line' which
1969' I said 'Complexity of the spatial illusion actual hue of those areas : the linear character of changes the colour of the colours, it is the shape
generated along the frontier where two colours these frontiers cannot avoid changing our of the area on one side of the line which
meet is .. . enormously increased if the linear sensation of the colour of those at eas. Hence a distorts the colour on the other side, and vice
character of those frontiers is irregular, freely jagged line separating two reds will make them versa. In the drawing of that line — with all its
drawn, intuitively arrived at'. It is the totally cooler or hotter, pinker or more orange, than a hazards — lies the search for the shape of colour.
regular, the perfectly geometric lines between smoothly looping or rippling line. The line
colours in the movement known as Op Art which changes the colour of the colours on either side of it. 1 See 'Two Reception Rooms' in Architecture and
distinguishes it entirely from my own — despite This being so, it follows that it is the linear Building magazine for October, 1958
I discussed the problem of the shaped canvas, and
our shared interest in optical after-images, and character that I give to the frontiers between of open, coloured sculpture, in 'Two Cultures',
so on. The aftet-image is for me merely a colour-areas that finally determines the apparent published in Studio International for December, 1970
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