The Rock Drill (Driller)

Mediums: gouache, cardboard.
Location: The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology, Oxford (the UK).

The work created before exploring the canons of the Vorticism Manifesto nonetheless demonstrates the artist’s interest in technological progress. The painting is called either “Rock Drill” or “Driller”; sometimes the amorphous pink figure on the left is interpreted as a female, which is very ambiguous. Some critics see here a confrontation between a soft form (a man) and an aggressive machine that easily destroys rocks. Rough contours, large planes of local colours vividly demonstrate the commitment of H. Saunders to the style of post-impressionism.