Martin Whitworth made this drawing at the Ōtautahi Christchurch home of his friend, artist Paul Johns. A light linen jacket given to Johns by another artist, Tony Fomison, was hanging near a small television on a table, and Whitworth pencilled them both in before deciding that the composition needed one further element. A friend of Johns’, Andrew Lake, agreed to pose. His sideways stance, crossed arms and bent knee lead our eyes toward the jacket, outlined against a black cavity, and through it to the absence of Fomison himself. Born and trained in Christchurch, Fomison was living in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland by this time, well on his way to becoming a respected and influential painter before his early death at the age of fifty.

(Absence, May 2023)