Figures, Places and Light
When does the surrounding space become part of the subject?
Follow surroundings that attract attention alongside a figure: colored grounds, rays, shadow-like areas and landscape-like passages. Some drawings leave room around a recognizable subject; others cross its boundary with the same marks found in the setting. Compare the direction and scale of those marks before deciding which part of the image to follow.
Grounds That Will Not Recede
Three works where the space beneath and around a form is as visually active as anything placed on it — the ground competes rather than supports.
NNOTB #21
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View & watch drawingA gabled building holds its shape through repeated misaligned outlines while neon yellow-green verticals and a teal lower band compete equally with the structure for attention.
NNOTB #158
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View & watch drawingGolden hillsides, a blue river channel, and a teal sky built from looping black and white lines make the landscape itself the subject — no single form anchors the field.
NNOTB #15
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View & watch drawingTurquoise sweeps and maroon hollows press against each other across three zones; white looping outlines hold the lower mass together without resolving it into any readable form.
Where the building in the previous work was framed by charged marks, here those marks have spread across the entire surface with no structure left to contain them.
Both works share amber-gold and blue-teal areas, but here the landscape has become far more turbulent and abstract — the legible hillside gives way to churning, interlocked color masses.
Canopy, Cloud, Open Air
Three works where marks accumulate into something sky-like or foliage-like, and the boundary between inside and outside becomes genuinely uncertain.
NNOTB #219
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View & watch drawingYellow clusters spread above dark upright forms in an arrangement that can suggest trees, with translucent areas softening the boundary between support and canopy.
After the turbulent horizontal zones of the previous work, the vertical movement here — dark forms rising into spreading yellow — introduces a different kind of spatial layering.
NNOTB #36
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View & watch drawingHorizontal white lines rule across vertical color strokes, holding yellow and orange masses above while blue strokes fall below; the two movements meet without resolving.
NNOTB #65
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View & watch drawingA dark figure sits amid billowing white loops on a blue-lavender ground while a warm solar disc occupies the upper left — the surrounding air carries as much visual weight as the figure within it.
The canopy-like yellow of the previous work reappears, but now white ruled lines impose a horizontal order that the color beneath refuses to respect.
The loose yellow masses of the previous work condense here into a single disc at upper left, and the open field below the figure carries the same diffuse, cloud-like quality the earlier work spread across its whole surface.
Faces and Fields
Four works where a face is surrounded by color zones or enclosing marks that divide or reframe it, plus one abstract field showing what remains when the face is absent.
NNOTB #296
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View & watch drawingYellow floods the upper field while olive pools below, splitting the face across two tones; a faint blue rectangle floats over the center like a second, cooler layer pressing in from outside.
The solar disc from the previous work has expanded here into an entire yellow field that the face must occupy rather than observe.
NNOTB #189
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View & watch drawingDense black hatching buries the face's surface while a yellow loop arcs outside the form, pulling attention around the figure rather than into it.
NNOTB #82
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View & watch drawingA broad fan of pale light pushes from the left across gold and ochre bands while a heavy black arc holds the right edge — an abstract field of light against weight, with no face present.
Where the previous face was split by a surrounding color field, this one is buried under hatching — the pressure has moved from the field inward to the surface itself.
The yellow loop outside the previous figure becomes here a full light source pushing across the frame; the figure has disappeared, leaving only the tension between radiance and dark mass.
NNOTB #84
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View & watch drawingA gold-olive mass fills the frame, its surface built from crossing scribble lines; a diagonal light beam cuts across the upper left while a dark cavity below reads as tense against the calm background spirals.
The broad light fan of the previous work narrows here into a single diagonal beam, and the mass it strikes is denser and more resistant than the open bands it crossed before.
Light as Enclosure
Four works where light does not simply illuminate but surrounds or structures the forms inside it, making the lit space feel sealed rather than open.
NNOTB #78
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View & watch drawingA form sits sealed inside a dome while gold rays push outward from behind it; the enclosure reads as both lit from within and pressed upon from without, the floating pale circles softening neither reading.
The diagonal beam of the previous work has expanded here into a full radial burst, and the form it surrounds is now literally enclosed rather than merely struck.
NNOTB #180
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View & watch drawingThe image divides between a dark layered left mass and a blazing yellow-gold right field where two white discs burn; red blocks at the bottom sit heavily against that upper light.
NNOTB #75
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View & watch drawingTwo hard light beams slice through layered nested rectangles, pulling the eye from a dense scribbled left edge toward glowing ovals that read as sources rather than reflections.
The dome's contained radiance opens here into an unenclosed split — light and dark occupy separate halves rather than one surrounding the other.
The two white discs of the previous work reappear here as two beams cutting through structure rather than burning within an open field.
NNOTB #73
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View & watch drawingTwo white-hot rectangles anchor the composition while zigzag lines spread outward in yellow and cyan; a dark compressed cluster at upper left sits in contrast to that brightness.
The beams of the previous work have condensed into two fixed rectangular sources, and the surrounding marks now radiate outward from them rather than crossing them.
Geometry and Scatter
Two works where surrounding space is organized by bars, arches, and zigzag lines that hold or release the forms sitting inside them.
NNOTB #74
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View & watch drawingA horizontal bar with oval recesses anchors the upper field while downward triangles and surrounding zigzag lines read as noise holding the central forms in charged suspension.
The two glowing rectangles of the previous work reappear here as oval recesses in a machine-like bar — the light sources have become inset forms, and the surrounding scatter has become more organised.
NNOTB #76 cash lightning
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View & watch drawingTwo diagonal beams slice through a field of zigzag borders and nested rectangles; glowing spiral cores inside the arched form hold still against all that surrounding movement.
The bar and triangles of the previous work give way here to diagonal beams crossing a similarly dense field — the geometry shifts from horizontal to diagonal, and stillness moves from the bar into the spiral cores.
One more look
Look at an earlier setting after the final works. Which surrounding shapes now seem as useful for reading the image as the figure itself?