AustLit

'Like many writers, I keep a collection of talismanic, consoling or provocative quotations from other artists dose to hand. Lately these seem to be coming from painters more than writers — like the American abstractionist Laurie Fendrich, who says the notion that abstraction is always about self-expression is both romantic and narcissistic. Abstraction can also be about ideas, she says: 'The complex struggle between order and chaos, for example, or how the flux of the organic world modifies the rigor of geometry.'' (Introduction)