Skip to main content
Overall image
Awake! awake!...Malcolm! awake! (#23 from the series Life As We Know It)
Overall image
Overall image

Awake! awake!...Malcolm! awake! (#23 from the series Life As We Know It)

Artist (American, born 1940)
Date2004
Mediumcrowquill/Pelikan ink on Arches paper
DimensionsImage (a): 26 1/16 × 41 1/8 in. (66.2 × 104.5 cm)
Support (a): 26 1/16 × 41 1/8 in. (66.2 × 104.5 cm)
Image (b): 6 13/16 × 40 15/16 in. (17.3 × 104 cm)
Support (b): 26 1/16 × 41 3/8 in. (66.2 × 105.1 cm)
ClassificationsDrawing
Credit LineMuseum purchase with funds from the Macquarie Group Foundation, 2012
Object number2012.26.1ab
DescriptionAwake…: A horizontal axis runs across the center of the paper, with different densities of ink hatch marks above and below the axis. Upper left and lower right quadrants of the drawing have darker areas of organic or biomorphic forms. Upper right and lower left quadrants have very spare markings.
Here lay Duncan: A horizontal band runs across the center of the paper, slightly angled. Different densities of hatch marks create a pattern of waves near this axis, while most of the paper remains blank.
Text Entries

The artist intends these works to be framed separately in Plexiglas, but always shown as a diptych, no more than 4 inches between the two. Left side of diptych is Awake!...; right side is Here Lay Duncan

Christine Taylor Patten is a longtime northern New Mexico resident who works with ink and a crowquill pen. She arrives at abstract imagery from a multitude of hatch marks in varying densities and that is often characterized by a fulcrum or turning point that allows the composition to be bisected. This diptych was made on the occasion of the 2004 Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. The individual titles of the diptych halves refer to lines and characters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Malcolm—the son of the benevolent King Duncan, whom Macbeth murders—is the character who restores order to the throne after Macbeth’s tyrannical rule. Malcolm is also the name of Patten’s father, in whose memory she made the drawing.

 

This diptych is part of the Life As We Know It series, which was inspired by Patten’s work with holography. In her holography lab, she made observations about coherent wave forms and patterns versus randomness. Her subsequent thinking was both physics-related and concerned with the dynamics of change and how we mimic this in our daily lives and behaviors.

On View
Not on view
Tangent #2 (535A.D.-T-2)
Christine Taylor Patten
2007
Taman
Garo Z. Antreasian
1985
Albuquerque, NM
Jack Delano
1943
Star Axis, Looking North
Edward Ranney
January 6, 1983
Edward Ranney, Star Axis, Looking at North Star, 1/7/83, January 7, 1983, gelatin silver print,…
Edward Ranney
January 7, 1983
Tri-Tam
Garo Z. Antreasian
1988
Suite Montseny No. 8
Antoni Tàpies
1993
Untitled
Gustave Baumann
n.d.
Untitled
Garo Z. Antreasian
1972