Deutscher and Hackett

'The paintings of Rick Amor often remind me of the Theatre of the Absurd. I wonder if he has read Pinter, Ionesco, Beckett - particularly Pinter? Maybe, maybe not, but I look at some of his paintings and to me they seem like stage sets where, although the subject depicted is realistic, at the same time it departs from reality; the place, time, identity become fluid, ambiguous, dreamlike, nightmare-like. Just as Pinter's plays are often characterised by feelings of menace evoked by what on the surface appears to be a trivial situation, so do Amor's paintings provoke feelings of unease. As in the Theatre of the Absurd, objects within a painting may at first seem randomly chosen for no apparent reason. However, these objects are thrown together with other elements, often a stormy backdrop, a windswept hill or an angry sky, presenting an underlying structure and meaning. The result is a painting which is redolent with haunting menace.'¹

1. Michelle McDonald, letter to the author, June 2007, quoted in Fry, G., Rick Amor, Beagle Press, Melbourne, 2008, p. 99