Eville 1983

Douglas Abdell made this artwork, Eville, on a surface of 196 x 104 cm. What really grabs me about this piece is the way it's put together, like a puzzle made of urban debris and raw emotion. There's a clear delight in the materiality, a real hands-on feel – you can almost smell the wood and the drying paint. The paint handling is wonderfully direct, not precious, but full of urgency. Look at the central figure, that face with the stark, graphic lines. It’s like a mask, or some kind of coded message emerging from the background. The texture around it is so varied, rough in places and almost delicate in others, and that contrast really adds to the emotional tension. The way Abdell puts this together reminds me a little of Cy Twombly’s assemblages, that same sense of poetry found in the everyday, the same fascination with language and mark-making. It's a reminder that art isn’t just about making something beautiful, but about opening up a space for new ways of seeing, feeling, and thinking.