Paul Partos, Glass Painting, 1993. Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 58.5cm. Courtesy: the artist and Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne.

In this exhibition, we see him taking paint off the canvas, scratching it away using a variety of tools. Sgraffito is a term applied to pottery and painting on glass and walls as well as painting on canvas, which might be a clue to his repeated titling of some of these works as ‘Glass paintings’. The works are ordered chronologically. The first half, from 1988-1991, are all untitled, while the second half are all titled ‘Glass painting’. In the middle, dated 1990, there’s a work titled Now where was I, No. 1. It’s a diptych, with the right panel reminiscent of the Calendar Day series and the left panel looking more like the untitled and ‘Glass’ paintings which were to follow. A coincidence? Probably not: more likely evidence of the artist taking stock and grasping a thread which he would weave with coherence over the next few years.

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