Born in India, Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was a British artist, writer and occultist, associated with the Surrealist movement. From 1939, Colquhoun primarily worked with Surrealist ‘automatic’ processes, whereby an element of chance is incorporated into artistic techniques to suppress conscious thought. This is an automatic painting produced through the process of ‘stylomancy’, a form of ‘decalcomania’. Paint is applied to paper, which is folded and then unfolded, revealing a chance symmetrical pattern. Colquhoun uses this pattern to trigger unconscious associations and imagery, which she has worked up with pencil and crosshatching in ballpoint pen. The figure revealed is Triton, the ancient Greek god of the sea, described by the artist in the description as a Telchine, an underwater creature, reflecting the artist’s interest in mythology, magic and occultism. The symmetrical composition also resembles an inkblot test, developed by Swiss psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach, which Colquhoun mentions in her 1949 essay on automatism ‘The Mantic Stain’.
