Anna White, Coral, oil  
on paper, 47 x 32.7 cm, 
1998

Paint is placed on paper or canvas before having glass pressed against its surface, mixing the paints according to the force applied. Then the glass is pried away from the support to leave behind coloured swirls and blobs. 

The whole is rendered with a characteristic texture due to the viscosity of paint and the two surfaces. Where it finally gives way from one surface to another can be traced in the ridges and rivulets, which oddly resemble pine forests, giving the otherwise abstract fields of colour the feel of aerial views of immense landscapes. 

Of course, the works are meant to sit on the verge of abstraction. In the manner of Rorschach, the residuum of paint is not illustrative but provocative. More works were made than those exhibited, which I guess is the collateral expense of working with chance. Patience is also requisite. 

While it's a truism to say, misrecognition is one of the truly generative forces in representation, artists usually own up pretty quickly to claim the results. Indeed, the initial moment of error and subsequent moment of discovery are often treated as simultaneous. 

We could easily recite a history for this reflexive tendency from as far back as Da Vinci; a history of the accidental or chance event which runs alongside a history of intended effects.  "If you look upon an old wall covered with dirt , or the odd appearance of some streaked stones, you may discover several things like landscapes, battles, clouds, uncommon attitudes, humorous faces, draperies, etc." (from Da Vinci's Treatise on Painting) 

Such a tendency culminates at well known junctures: the theory of the sketch, Impressionism, Surrealism and so on. Just as often, grandiloquent claims are made for the results according to a revelatory logic: it's the Truth, the sublime; the origin! 

But it's not the usual fine line between abstraction and figuration which White draws here. While the titles suggest perceptible content, Party; Cloud; Coral; Leaf. I could not often recognise these qualities in the work. Instead, the fine line is marked between two types of abstraction; one mechanical and the other psychological, such that nothing much becomes clearer through looking (either recognising or misrecognising content) but through freewheeling association at some other level(s). 

Which is not to say that the method isn't practiced or that the results are arbitrary. But, rather than settling for a pictorial resolution to the appearance of things, White searches further afield. 

As far as this further realm of association is delineated through the titles, it appears to comprise various registers and states. The association may be material (Gelati), or descriptive (Red and Blue), or eventful (Storm or Sunset), or qualitative (Mouldy) or non-specific (Colourised). Indeed, it also seems that one could, in the spirit of these works, retitle them all depending on what they suggest to each viewer. 

Unlike Alexander Cozens' blots, White does not suddenly bring appearances back from the brink of chaos into an intelligible picturesque tradition. Nor, like Clifford Still, does she contrive transcendence through abstraction, crossing "dark and wasted valleys" to "reach a 'high and limitless plane". 

Rather, White's work moves in many different directions across various thresholds, and keeps moving. Through what seems like happenstance her recent work imbricates various registers of experience and sensation. It is perhaps in this sense truer to its method; simply, almost randomly, generative. 

Stuart Koop 
1998 

© The artist and 
Courtesy of the artist.

Anna White, Turbulence, oil  
on paper, 53.5 x 39.5 cm, 
1998

Anna White, Gelati, oil  
on paper, 39.5 x 26.4 cm, 
1998