National Galleries of Scotland

In 1955, Gear began to shed landscape references from his work to make absolutely abstract works featuring interlocking slabs of colour. This is one of several stark paintings the artist produced in 1955 to 1956 and is best understood as part of that series of works. Gear did not normally make preparatory sketches, explaining that `the studies are mainly in the previous paintings so to speak. Paintings go on from one to the other and evolve; a painting isn?t done as a one off, in its own right.? The artist?s use of grey suggests the bleakness of winter, and indeed, the work can be precisely dated as being painted between November 1955 and January 1956.