Three in the Abyss

Alexander Nepote

For Nepote's February 1970 exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute's Quay Gallery, Palmer French wrote about his mixed media works:

Nepote’s recent work competently essays a familiar idiom of lithoid, organic free-form composition to which his chosen medium is uniquely suited—the torn edges and flattened crinkles of stiffened paper being readily adaptable to suggesting the ridges and corrugations of natural rock surfaces. In a prolific series embracing such titles as Mossy Rocky Niche, Rocky Slope, Lost Rock, Under the Cliff, Another Lump Rock, Green Abyss and Upper Grotto, to name but a few, Nepote conjures rewarding mineral fantasies evoking many moods in freely combining a wide range of the textures and forms associated with stone. (Artforum, Vol. 8, No. 6, February 1970.)

In Three in the Abyss Nepote achieves that "mineral fantasy" by layering the mottled textures of watercolor paper, soaked in watercolor washes, and envelopes them in near-black hues of red, blue, and green acrylic paint to form what could be as much an alien landscape as a still life.