| Description
| Oil painting - abstract of two standing nudes seen from multiple viewpoints, strong red/orange colouring, heavy impasto (layers of paint). Painting is framed, unglazed, signed and dated at lower right. Artist Ronald Watson.
Two Figures was painted in an old wash-house in the Aberdeen tenement where Watson was living at the time. The painting appears blurred and abstracted, but two silhouettes of figures can still be defined. Watson was inspired by the Cubist paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. He was intrigued by their use of "multi view points" and "the mechanics of illusion". This inspired Watson to paint a whole series of figure compositions seen from many angles. Watson says the Cubist sculptures of Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner are further sources of inspiration for his work.
In Two Figures the paint is thickly applied but we can still see distinct layers, where the bold, red paint has been overlaid. This contrasts with the dark, solid, sculptural figures which almost fill the canvas. |
