Gordon Walters

Gordon Walters is an artist who is famous for the optical games of his paintings, and if you look closely at Study For Cover Of Ascent you will see what this means. Start in the centre, a white vertical stripe with two black ‘koru’ shapes next to it. So far so easy – the white is the background and the black sits on top in the foreground. But keep going and it gets trickier. The black koru shapes sit next to white koru shapes and all of a sudden something weird happens, because black is no longer on top. It has become the background. This is the visual trick that Walters creates so well in his painting. Background becomes foreground in a shifting pattern that you can never pin down with your eyes.