concepts of space, where boundaries are almost non-existent, and in which time itself has acquired new definitions; in which the intricacies of existence overlay the fundamentals of life, and man as never before has to struggle for a way out.
Like poetry and music, his pictures have the time element, they unfold their contents gradually. With an active imagination they have to be approached, read, and their symbols interpreted. They reveal their tenor if one listens with the inner ear, „the ear of the heart“, as Jean Paul calls it. [...]
With an unusual intensity Tobey builds up these worlds of his visions. Deeply inclined towards religion, philosopher and sage, he knows the truth of the saying of Meister Eckhart: „If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And likewise if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence“.


Richard Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage, Limelight Editions, New York 1988

And though I loved the work of Morris Graves, and still do, it was Tobey who had a great effect on my way of seeing, which is to say my involvement with painting, or my involvement with life even. I remember in particular a walk with Mark Tobey from the area of Seattle around the Cornish School downhill and through the town toward a Japanese restaurant - a walk that would not normally take more than forty-five minutes, but on this occasion it must have taken several hours, because he was constantly stopping and pointing out things to see, opening my eyes in other words - which, if I understand it at all, has been a function of twentieth-century art: to open our eyes; not to do as the Surrealists wish, that is to say, to make us less guilty perhaps, or something like that. (p. 174)

Now I don’t remember the exact date of it, whether it was in the early or middle forties, but there was an exhibition at the Willard Gallery which included the first examples of white writing on the part of Mark. I liked one so much that I began buying it on the installment plan. I’ve since, unfortunately, sold it. It was a painting that had no representation in it at all, though his paintings including his write writing paintings frequently do have representational elements. This one had nothing. It was completely, so to