This work is one of a set of similar ‘free form’ or ‘automatic’ drawings in watercolour or gouache, likely made in quick succession, in the 1950s, by Marlow Moss in Cornwall.

Before display at the MuHKA, and subsequent arrival at Mayor Gallery in London, this work was kept in the suitcase featured in the 2022 film 'De Verdwenen Lijnen van Marlow Moss’ [The lost lines of Marlow Moss] directors: Fifi Visser and André van der Hout – featuring Andreas Oosthoek, Florette Dijkstra, Ankie de Jongh-Vermeulen, Bart De Baere, Yuranan Panya In, Matthijs Erdman, Joost Jobse, Maaike de Wolf-Mol and myself.

The scene captured on camera with Andreas Oosthoek and myself, at his kitchen table in the Nijhoff house at Groot Valkenisse in 2021, looking through the material and ephemera of the suitcase, was the first time I had seen these works in the flesh – I previously only knew of their existence from a VHS video recording of un-broadcasted footage by the Dutch arts television programme 'Kunst Mest', filmed 1994-1995, shown to me by Florette Dijkstra during my PhD research, in 2004. I reproduced stills from this video in the appendix to my 2008 PhD thesis (see Fig.4.22 in Volume 3).

The ‘free form’ drawings are a very interesting moment in Moss’s oeuvre – in many ways a departure from her customary style. They were clearly executed rapidly, and in expressive gestural strokes; they connect to the Paul Klee notion of “taking a line for a walk”. There is a strong and significant relationship between these drawings and Moss’s work in sculpture – although she continued to make paintings of a neo-plasticist ilk concurrently, her sculptures featured dynamic curves and linear forms in wire.

The ‘free form’ drawings can also be related to nature and organic forms – Moss is ambivalent about 'NATURE' in her writing (capitalized as so in her text for Issue 2, Abstraction Création: Art Non-Figuratif, 1933, quoted below) but her partner Netty Nijhoff placed emphasis on the importance of nature to Moss personally. Moss was from London and established her artistic career in Paris, yet was always drawn away to the countryside, in France, the Netherlands – and Cornwall where these drawings were made.

This particular work, in blue, black and umber, is joyful and exuberant – there is a spontaneous, even animal, energy about it. Like many of the works from this series, it is possible to read it figuratively as representation (an eye? A cat? A bird?) or even as calligraphy of some kind. It is however an abstract image relating to Moss’s pursuit of ‘space, movement and light’ as described by Nijhoff in the 1962 Stedelijk catalogue.

It is worth noting that the paper used is the same letter paper that Moss used for many letters held in the Tate archives and elsewhere.

Atmosphere, earth, water, animals, minerals, plants - a chaotic universe, the movement of which determines destinies. Man is part of this universe. An accidental form whose aim remains unknown; yet he is in turn creator of a universe of names, of numbers and of Gods. Expressed in plastic forms according to the stages of his evolution: art.

-Lucy Howarth