This image shows a male figure who appears to be in ecstasy as he stares skyward, while lifting his shirt to expose his abdomen. Here, Nolan has used color and line to powerful effect. The figure is made up of a mass of crisscrossing lines that effectively convey a sense of human form, and also how light plays over skin. The man in rapture is in the foreground, directly confronting the viewer. He has been framed so that we do not see below his thigh; he is within an interior space that seems to recede quickly into depth, and which contains several objects. Nolan has used white and warm colors, yellow, red and orange, against dark ground.
The composition is complex and dramatic, with Nolan’s characteristic massing of forms through tonal jumps. The figure is sturdily rendered, yet the linear marks of the medium seem ready to explode from the surface.
This piece forms part of a diptych inspired by Nolan’s travels in a desert in Chile. The colours are inspired by the desert palette. This is the culminating print of Nolan’s “This is a Call for Beauty” series that constituted an appeal for emotion in art.