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<> ABOVE: Blackout, 1992, oil on canvas, 152.4x101.7 cm. (Note: To navigate click arrows or image.) BLACKOUT, 1992 The title of this painting is a reference to the famous 1968 novel Trou de mémoire, by Quebec writer Hubert Aquin, whose affective mood - what the German Romantics used to call the Stimmung – McEwen shared for a while. The composition of this picture, quite unprecedented in the oeuvre, reveals an inner tumult. It seems to offer a vision of Paul Klee’s "primordial chaos," the flux that pre-exists all creation. It resurrects the uncontrolled brushstroke, takes things back to basics in order to start over, to dissolve painting as if the relation between artist and art were threatened. In fact, what we see here is the expression of the extraordinarily powerful emotion experienced when McEwen returned to painting after a serious illness. Like the masterly watercolour series whose title is borrowed from Paul Éluard, Capital of Pain (below), which employs a similar palette, these works embody the most exquisitely personal of feelings.