[Ann Drysdale]

Ah, I can see it now. I can see both blue and green in the background. But I can't see teeth.

I am probably holding back the potential of the picture by trying to "understand" it. I can "get" the shape of the once-upon-a-time fontanelle in the green tracery on the round top of the skull, but my eye is drawn every time to the plurge of green below the jaw. I can't make it belong to either the inside at the back or the outside at the front. I can't decide on "where" it is and this freezes my attention.

In a weird way it reminds me of Holbein's "Ambassadors" I know it's a skull I'm looking at but it's a sort of Star-Trekky "skull, Jim, but not as we know it".

Tell me what I need to know.

[ross hamilton hill]

Ann, step back about 4 feet from your computer screen and it will all come together. There is probably a technical term for this but generally a painting is meant to be 'seen' from a few feet away. You could do the same with Sharon's pointillist painting.

[Ann Drysdale]

Of course - thanks, Ross. A practical suggestion and one that I should have thought of for myself. Will do. (sound of Norwegian rocking-stool being scraped backwards, punctuated by knee-creaks...)

[Ann Drysdale]

I've done that. The "green flash" still assumes a disproportionate(?) importance. From a practical point of view (!), a lot of the upper jaw seems to be missing, too, but I just assumed that that is how this object "is". I have begun to trust Rick as a painter, especially on matters of personal perspective and relative "size" in real terms. I give him "permission". (See, Sharon, this is what happens when the whiff of Yak is allowed into your artspace...)

From that Rossdistance, the swirl on the side of the head, the un-ear, suggests a concave surface, which confuses my eyes.

But this, in chronological order, is what distance did. The skull became more skull, I questioned its veracity, then let it be. The background suddenly took on texture which asked me "how can that sort of disturbance be a vertical surface?" and then immediately answered me by remaining, defiantly, as it is.

Then the green flash, dammit, and the swirly absence of ear and then - the eyesocket that, from a distance, took on a depth that sucked my breath into it. Almost a visual definition of a black hole. I peered in, exploring its hinted-at innards; it should have stared back. But it didn't; it closed an invisible fist on my looking and wouldn't give it back.

It still hasn't.