All texts copyright Richard Shillitoe
[composition: three growing
forms] 1941
Ink and watercolour.
12½ x 17in. (32.4 x 43.5cm.)
Signed and dated: ‘Colquhoun/41’ lower right.
Provenance
NT.
British Museum.
Literature
Ratcliffe, 2007, ill. b/w pl. 58.
This automatic drawing marks the first appearance of the motif of three vertical forms rising from a
horizontal one. It occurs again in Gorgon and Guardian Angel, both of 1946. In the present work the
forms are ambiguous: are they organic or mineral – or an intermediate state of petrifaction? In
Moment of Death (1946) it becomes evident that the horizontal form is a supine human figure and the
vertical forms are the departing spirit.