Albert Herbert’s method of creating added a further level of reconciliation to his work. He has explained that a painting usually starts with some idea that could be put into words but that when he begins to paint he becomes fully involved in “the struggle to harmonise shapes, colours and textures”. This can go on for several months with the original idea becoming lost in the paint only to re-emerge as something quite different. In this way he both draws his images from his subconscious and integrates them into the wholeness of the painting.

His approach tallies with that of another contemporary painter, Ken Kiff. Kiff, too, argues that his subconscious images only achieve meaning through the process of shaping and forming the painting. The painting, as a whole, must be discovered, by the artist, bit by bit. This has to happen in order “for the thing to really grow together and be significantly all part of the same growing thing”. In this growth there can be a sense of peace, completeness and wholeness despite the presence, at times, of disturbing imagery.

Cecil Collins, too, came to use a similar approach to a united development of image and form. He called this process the Matrix. Collins’ use of the Matrix involved the following; he would choose two complementary colours, then, with his eyes shut he would paint a number of brush strokes. He would then open his eyes and consider the marks on the paper or canvas. As he looked images would suggest themselves and he would select and paint the one that he wished to impose as the predominate image. The point of the Matrix was to “penetrate deeper into the creative imagination so that it is that which speaks to the artist and not the shallower levels of the mind … The Matrix … stands for all the hidden desires of the soul”.

“To contemplate comes from ‘templum, temple, a place, a space for observation, marked out by the augur.’ It means, not simply to observe, to regard, but to do these things in the presence of a god. And to meditate is ‘to keep the mind in a state of contemplation’; its synonym is “to muse,’ and to muse comes from a word meaning ‘to stand with open mouth”not so comical if we think of ‘inspiration’—to breathe in.

So—as the poet stands openmouthed in the temple of life, contemplating his experience, there come to him the first words of the Poem: the words which are to be his way in to the poem, if there is to be a poem. The pressure of demand and the meditation on its elements culminate in a moment of vision, of crystallization, in which some inkling of the correspondence between those elements occurs; and it occurs as words. If he forces a beginning before this point, it won’t work.”