Study for Three Muses 1985

Will Barnet made this study for Three Muses using graphite, chalk and pastel. Look how the dry media skitters across the paper, like a brisk wind blowing through a copse of trees. The marks are provisional, the image spectral. There’s a lovely passage on the ground plane, a dense area of charcoal, smudged by hand perhaps, out of which two crows emerge, rendered with a lighter touch. This feels like a metaphor for the image as a whole, how figures emerge from a ground, a process of conjuring and attending. There's a flattening of space, typical of Barnet, but here the stacked forms also read like the rapid accumulation of marks. This piece reminds me of Milton Avery, another artist who made art about looking. Both Barnet and Avery invite a slowing down, a sustained duration of seeing. Their works embrace ambiguity, leaving space for the viewer to participate in the artmaking process.