The Animal 125 1968

John Altoon made this drawing, The Animal 125, with ink and watercolor on paper. Look at these marks, the quick flicks of the wrist, the blotches of pale colour, and the hatching of quick lines—they feel like the artist was thinking and looking, all at once. I imagine Altoon, leaning over this piece of paper, feeling out the space and maybe the weirdness of an encounter. The lizard stretches out, but its colour feels diluted, washed-out, like it’s trying to disappear into the ground. And what about the squat creature on the left? It's perched on a little hill made of lines. Its body is pink and smudged; it’s hard to tell what it is. Altoon lets these creatures float on the surface, unfinished and unresolved. His works often dealt with the body in fragments, mixed with abstraction. To me, it speaks to how artists are constantly in conversation. They pass on gestures, like the baton in a relay race, from one to the other. The result is this openness to seeing, thinking, and feeling.