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< > ABOVE: Absence Squared, 1990, oil on canvas, 198x152.4 cm. Private collection. (Note: To navigate click arrows or image.) ABSENCE SQUARED, 1990 Each painting is indissolubly linked to the whole oeuvre – is, in fact, illuminated and justified by it. This oeuvre unfolds oblivious to factors outside the studio. If the palette darkens, it is to rework solutions already explored in the 1971-1973 series Broadlands Lake (below) and Companions of Silence. The artist is clearly exploring methods of "figuring" absence, by definition unrepresentable. Here again, the upper and lower margins offer glimpses of an orange-red ground that is almost entirely "erased" by the whitish traces of a vigorous all-over brushstroke. The two narrow verticals of the lateral margins conjure a rectangle that echoes the format of the canvas. An absence within an absence.