HOUSE IN THE CLOUDS, c.1957
Gouache. 12½ x 9½in. (32 x 24cm.)
Provenance
Sworders, Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, 13 November 2007, lot 387.
Red Raven Arts, London.
Exhibited
London, Gallery I, 1957, No. 13.
This automatic work demonstrates the classic surrealist claims to transform the world by means of discoveries made by chance, and through the juxtaposition of opposites. Further, as is often the case with Colquhoun, she achieves her results through the combination of two modalities; the verbal and the visual. The title contributes as much to the elucidation of the work as does the image itself.
The watercolour paint stains reveal our propensity to impose meaning on to forms and to discover figurative images in shapes which are, in fact, the result of random processes. The work contrasts the insubstantiality and ephemeral nature of cloud formations with the solidity and permanence we expect of buildings. It raises the question of what sort of entity would, or could, live in such a structure.