ABSTRACT
The Johns-Beckett collaboration was not very successful and more or less marked the winding down of Johns' collaborative impulse. In the case of in-expressive or objective art, collaboration is a way of withdrawing the persona of the artist, of encasing it behind the impersonal mask of partnership and cooperation. Creative collaborations are driven by friendships between personalities who are often not noted for their friendly nature. The work is a United States of the senses, with encaustic texture, textual collage and stencilling, and the visual combination of anonymous grey, striking swatches of primary colour, and secondary colours that emerge like illumination from under grey surfaces. The sweep of the dangling broom is a beautiful visual metaphor of the artists' brushstroke. For the metaphysical promise of collaboration provides an enduring image of what might be. This continues to play on the mind and the soul of the artist long after collaboration is done with.
