Two Shores 02

Each column holds exactly three minutes. You move through them left to right, like the narrow pages of a notebook, and the last column closes the moment.

One ring gives the first set of columns, the other gives the second. They sit near each other at the same height, so the same minute appears twice inside the frame.

This is the piece in the series where two rhythms compare fastest. A dense column against an open one at the same instant: the difference shows before you have tried to read it.

Cutting time into identical parts is what makes comparison possible. Every column weighs the same as its neighbour, so their differences come only from what happened inside.

Without that cut, a wide column might simply mean 'longer', and the eye would no longer know whether it was looking at duration or intensity. The grid removes the ambiguity.

Three minutes is the step that lets a change show without chopping it up. Shorter, and each column becomes a fragment; longer, and the variations average out and vanish.

Forty-five minutes give sixteen columns to a person. That count sets how wide each one is, and therefore how fine the drawing inside can be.

A shorter moment would give fewer and wider ones, and the piece would read more like a run of portraits. A longer one would give more and finer ones, and it would read like a weave.

For those more interested in comparison than in fusion. This piece does not try to fit two people into one shape: it sets them opposite each other, minute by minute, and lets the gap show.

It is also the most legible of the series for someone new to the medium. The grid gives an immediate way in, and the rest is deciphered afterwards.

It also holds up with other people in the room. A column gets pointed at, compared with its neighbour, and the conversation starts there rather than from an explanation.

Fine-art paper, signed pigment print, portrait format. The columns stand upright in the frame, and the eye crosses them sideways.

The artwork arrives matted, ready to frame, with its numbered certificate. A further copy of the same print is requested from the studio.