MIRROR OVERFLOWING, 1976
Enamel and gold on board. 11 x 9¼in. (28.7 x 24cm.)
Signed with the monogram ’76.
Inscribed on the reverse with the artist’s name, the title of the work and the date. With the Paul label
Provenance
National Trust bequest.
A mirror can do no more than reflect the light that touches its surface. The reflection in Mirror Overflowing, however, is not constrained by the laws of optics, but spills over the edge of the frame and begins to seep down the handle. It is in the tradition of La Condition Humaine and other works by Magritte in which the picture appears to match exactly – one imagines – the scene that appears behind it; a play on visibility and concealment. The image that Colquhoun’s mirror cannot contain, however, is blank. How can a mirror reflect absence, and how can that absence be so large that it cannot be contained but must overflow the frame? Perhaps, like the mirror of the scryer, it is blank so that the viewer may project into it their boundless imagination.