Conner began making inkblot drawings in the 1980s as a radical reduction of his practice, creating works generated by the bilateral symmetry of the folded blot rather than by compositional intention. The reference to Rorschach is inescapable and deliberate: these are images whose meaning is supplied by the viewer, not encoded by the artist, a position that radicalizes the Abstract Expressionist claim for the viewer’s participation without the heroic emotionality of that earlier movement. Conner used Pelican black India ink on Bristol board, materials chosen for their archival stability and their commercial ordinariness, the same materials a commercial illustrator or a high school student might use. This work is of the intimate scale that characterizes most of the inkblot series.
