Toward a First Principles Theory of Australian Art

 

Peter Davidson - Studio Praxis delaying the dinner

pencil pastel texta on paper 

20 cm h x 13 cm w

Toward a First Principles Theory of Australian Art

Australian art history is rich in commentary yet curiously lacking in theory. It has produced influential narratives about landscape, identity, nationalism, postcolonial tension, and cultural belonging, but it has not produced a framework that explains how artistic form is generated at the level of perception and action. This absence is striking. For more than a century, Australian art discourse has asked what artworks mean, how they represent the land, or how they negotiate cultural identity. It has not asked the more fundamental question: How does a mark come into being?

The project advanced here proposes that such a question marks the beginning of a genuinely new theoretical field. It claims to constitute the first Australian-born art theory operating at the level of first principles — not concerned with style, subject matter, or symbolism, but with the mechanics of artistic production itself. To make this claim clear, “theory” is defined in a strict sense: as a structural account of the transformation of perception into material form. This is not a manifesto, not a cultural argument, and not an interpretive system. It is a model of the conditions under which a mark is produced.

For decades, Australian art writing has excelled at interpretation. Its dominant frameworks — landscape-based readings, nationalist and post-nationalist narratives, postcolonial and decolonial critiques, sociological analyses, and stylistic movements — have shaped the field profoundly. Yet these approaches overwhelmingly address meaning, identity, symbolism, and cultural positioning. They describe what artworks signify or how they respond to historical forces. What they do not offer is a mechanistic account of the act of making: the perceptual latency between seeing and doing, the cognitive delay that structures intention, the bodily transmission of that intention, the resistance of materials, or the environmental interference that shapes the final mark.

The present theory begins precisely where these discourses end. It treats artistic production as a temporal event: the interval between the optic moment (t₀) and the spatial mark (t₀ + D). In this model, the artwork is not an image but the residue of a collision between perception and resistance. The delay — the “Sovereign Space” — becomes the primary structuring condition of artistic form. It is within this interval that perception is transformed, distorted, slowed, or accelerated by the forces acting upon it. Light, heat, viscosity, latency, and physiological lag all intervene. The mark is not a representation of the optic moment; it is the outcome of the delay that separates the optic from the act.

This shift marks a move to first principles. The theory does not ask what the artwork depicts or expresses. It asks how perception becomes inscription, how delay structures that transformation, and how environmental conditions modify the delay. Within Australian art history, no prior framework has attempted to theorise this interval or to treat delay as the fundamental variable of artistic production.

It is important to distinguish this model from European phenomenology, which has influenced Australian art writing in various ways. Thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty have shaped discussions of embodied perception, but their frameworks privilege perception over inscription, do not theorise delay as a constitutive force, and are not environmentally specific. The present theory diverges on all three points. It positions delay — not embodiment — as the central variable. It treats the environment not as a backdrop but as an active interfering force. And it grounds the model in the specific conditions of Australian practice, where light, heat, distance, and technological mediation produce distinctive forms of perceptual offset. This is not an application of European phenomenology. It is a structurally distinct model.

The claim to novelty is made within a clearly defined scope. It does not apply to Indigenous epistemologies of art and Country, which operate within fundamentally different ontological and epistemic frameworks. The present theory is explicitly limited to Australian-born, Western, non-Indigenous, studio-based artistic practice. Within that bounded field, the claim to theoretical originality stands.

A further point of distinction lies in the reframing of the artist. Australian art discourse has long positioned the artist as a displaced subject, an identity seeker, or a cultural translator. This theory replaces those cultural narratives with a kinetic one. It positions the artist as an observer in permanent perceptual offset — structurally misaligned with their own perception due to delay. This is not a psychological or cultural condition. It is a temporal one. No existing Australian theory makes this claim.

Central to this framework is the concept of “Sovereign Space.” This is not a metaphor but an epistemic claim. By defining sovereignty as the interval between perception and action, the theory avoids territorial claims, identity claims, and representational authority. Agency is located solely in the act of transformation itself. The artist’s only territory is the delay they inhabit — the space in which perception becomes form.

The conclusion is therefore narrow, bounded, and defensible. This project constitutes the first Australian art theory to operate at the level of first principles of mark-making, grounded in delay as the structuring condition of perception, action, and environment. It does not replace existing Australian art theories. It operates beneath them — at the level where perception becomes form.

Notes from the studio - The Essential Non-Linearity: Why Independence Is the Core Methodology of 2 Dogs Art Space

 

Notes from the studio - The Essential Non-Linearity: Why Independence Is the Core Methodology of 2 Dogs Art Space 

 

Peter Davidson 2026

Aging Mushrooms III

Oil wax acrylic on wooden panel

14 cm w x 18 cm h 

2Dogs Art Space - Akashi (明石）- Japan - Research Centre

Research Statement: The 2 Dogs Art Space

The 2 Dogs Art Space Research Centre operates outside conventional chronology, functioning instead within the medium of delay. Grounded in The Davidson Hypothesis (t₀ → t₀ + D), the Centre posits that artists do not act upon the present directly; rather, they respond to reality through a structural lag where perception crystallizes into action. This "Laboratory of Delay" demonstrates that while we may inhabit a shared physical space, our perceived realities are perpetually offset.

The Phenomenon of Scintillation

Scintillation is the flicker that occurs when you leave the timeless space of Delay and produce a spatial mark on the surface of the paper or canvas—one charged with the intentionality that drives your studio praxis.

When painting in delay within studio praxis, and scintillation is achieved, I place the artworks in the exhibition space, releasing further research. 

The Jelly Model & Temporally Thick Fields

The research utilizes the Jelly Model, where perception and artistic creation unfold within a "temporally thick field" rather than a linear sequence. Because the core mechanism of this work is non-presence and transformation, it cannot function within systems that demand fixed schedules or predetermined outcomes. To impose a conventional timeline on this process is to nullify the delay, effectively collapsing the research itself.

Integrated Studio Praxis

The studio functions in the spirit of the historical workshop—a site where thinking and making are inseparable. Our methodology is a continuous, integrated loop of:

• Traditional Media: Painting, drawing, and printmaking.

• Theoretical Inquiry: Material investigation and conceptual rigor.

• Technological Dialogue: The use of AI tools as both a stress-test and an accelerant for research.

These elements do not exist in silos; they inform and reshape one another, ensuring the emergence of unpredictable and original insights.

Minimal Infrastructure, Maximum Connection

The physical conditions of the Centre are intentionally minimal—operating without electricity, water, or conventional infrastructure. This "cost-free" status removes the burden of production pressure, allowing the work to remain purely investigative. This material simplicity is balanced by a global reach; through AI and open-access knowledge, the space remains a site of conceptual expansion.

Conclusion

Supported by a network of collaborators and AI-driven feedback, the 2 Dogs Art Space remains an open, evolving field. Independence is not an accessory to this research; it is the fundamental condition. It is only through this autonomy that the integrity of the "delay" can be preserved, allowing the work to unfold according to its own internal logic.

The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto - Collection Gallery

The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

The Art of the Interval: MoMAK and the Science of Delay

I. The Perceptual Encounter: MoMAK

My recent visit to the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMAK), became a practical test of the Two Dogs Art Space Axiom. By moving through the Collection Gallery and the #WhereDoWeStand? exhibition (this is a very good show) without relying on chronology or periodization, I attempted to encounter the works through a purely perceptual lens—grounding the experience in what I call the Delay. The Davidson Hypothesis (t₀ → t₀ + D)  situates artistic praxis precisely in this interval between seeing and doing.

Artists are born with a pulse, not a clock. Any artwork that emerges through the Delay carries this pulse—the interval between the inception of an idea and the moment it becomes a spatial mark. This is where the scintillation of studio praxis originates: thought transforming into action, whether through an oil trace or a pencil mark, each loaded at the apogee of visual memory. This “sovereign space” must remain free from the aesthetic desires of institutions that often massage studio praxis into performative outcomes. History offers many examples of this pressure—"the official salons" that kept Cézanne out of the picture for far too long.

The museum’s necessary labor, then, is to educate societal memory on the difference between genuine aesthetic praxis and work that capitulates to institutional taste.

II. Case Studies in Sovereignty: Iwata and Fukada

In MoMAK’s Collection Gallery, I encountered two works that—despite their temporal and material distance—shared a common origin in the Delay.

• IWATA Shigeyoshi, Work -151 (1965)

A scintillating assembly of oil, wood, cotton, and iron on canvas. Its apparent simplicity belies the sustained praxis behind it. The materials vibrate with the sensation that the artist has only just stepped out of the room, leaving the work still resonating in his wake.

• FUKADA Chokujo, Hawk with Waterfall / Mandarin Ducks in Snow (1895)

A delicate color-on-silk composition, poised and precise. Separated by seventy years and radically different motifs, both works arise from the same sovereign space of delay. They demonstrate that when artists are free from the demands of patrons and industry, they produce a unity and diversity that societal memory can enjoy collectively—and even impudently.

III. The Axiom of Delay

Developed through three decades of studio practice and formalized in the 2020 exhibition Delay (Akashi), the Axiom proposes that artistic figuration does not emerge from historical sequence but from a non-temporal perceptual interval. The Delay is the structural mediator between sensation and action—the silent space where the mark is born. “When the ‘when’ of a piece is removed—when Chokujo’s work is no longer confined to its Meiji-era designation—its agency is restored as a living force.”

IV. Leonardo and the Energy of Completion

This framework allows a radical re-reading of Leonardo da Vinci. His unfinished works are often framed as failures of persistence. Through the Axiom, they become perfectly complete.

For Leonardo, a work was finished the moment the scintillating energy of the concept reached its limit. To push further would be to slip into technical virtuosity—the habitual execution of craft—rather than the living presence of the Delay. Material incompleteness becomes the preservation of conceptual spark.

V. Synthesis: Beyond the Chronological

Viewing art outside of time challenges the foundations of traditional art history. It shifts our attention:

• From History to Structure: privileging perception over period.

• From Craft to Energy: valuing conceptual saturation over technical habit.

• From Sequence to Interval: recognizing the Delay as the true locus of artistic power.

It seems to me the curator got the pulse right in the collection exhibition.  So view it through your own pulse. 

Further context on Iwata’s Informel-era praxis can be found in The Japan Times (2016).

View Fukada Chokujo’s work via the MoMAK Collection Database.

From Spacetime to Temporal Jelly: Bridging Einstein’s Cosmos and Davidsonian Consciousness

 

Peter Davidson - Broccoli - eye tracking and delay 

Pencil, texta, pastel on paper

20 cm h x 12 .5 cm w 

From Spacetime to Temporal Jelly: Bridging Einstein’s Cosmos and Davidsonian Consciousness

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1. Introduction

Einstein’s equations elegantly describe how matter and energy warp spacetime, accurately predicting planetary motion, gravitational lensing, and cosmic expansion. Yet, these equations operate at a macroscopic level, assuming continuous spacetime and neglecting the cognitive mediation through which humans perceive the universe. Peter Davidson’s Temporal Jelly Integration Model provides a complementary framework, emphasizing that the present is unattainable and that conscious experience is always shaped by internal delays. 

For example, in studio praxis for drawing or painting there is only the future, delay after the optics and history being the spatial paint marks or drawing trace on canvas or paper. there is no such thing as present time its a continuous flow energy (which i have called jelly) from the future through optic delay (without time but with influence into history. 

Note on Intent: This essay is not an attempt to make art scientific. Rather, it utilizes the framework of physics equations to describe the profound role of delay within studio praxis. By applying these formalisms, we can better articulate how the artist navigates the gap between thought and mark, using the language of the cosmos to map the internal "jelly" of the creative process.

“The equations below are not proposed to be a testable physical law, but as a conceptual diagram using mathematical syntax to articulate temporal integration in lived experience.”

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2. Einstein and the Cosmos

The core of General Relativity (GR) is:

$$G_{\mu\nu} + \Lambda g_{\mu\nu} = \frac{8 \pi G}{c^4} T_{\mu\nu}$$

Here, $G_{\mu\nu}$ encodes spacetime curvature, and $T_{\mu\nu}$ encodes energy-matter content. Einstein’s genius was to show that gravity is not a force but geometry.

• Predictive success: Gravitational waves, Mercury’s orbit, and GPS corrections.

• Limitations: Singularities and the quantum realm expose GR’s incompleteness. At scales below the Planck length, spacetime may be discrete, rendering continuous equations only approximations.

"The 'two circles' analogy—representing Einstein’s brain generating the equation in one circle and the physical reality of spacetime in the second—perfectly captures this gap. The delay between conceptualization and manifestation mirrors General Relativity’s lack of absolute simultaneity. In studio praxis, the future motif seen by the artist moves through an inherent delay before it becomes a spatial mark on the canvas. Because of this, the 'idea' and the 'creation' can never exist at the same time. Delay is the fundamental space in between that prevents simultaneity, acting as the 'jelly' that structures our experience of reality."

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3. Temporal Jelly Integration Model

Davidson reframes perception as inherently delayed and constructed. His model decomposes total delay into:

• $\Delta t_{body}$: sensory and motor integration

• $\Delta t_{mind}$: cognitive interpretation

• $\Delta t_{art}$: artistic or deliberate representation

All conscious experience $E_C$ is a jellied integration:

$$E_C = \int \left[ \frac{\partial P_W}{\partial t} \cdot f(M_{Ret}, M_{Pro}) \right] d(\Delta t_{total})$$

Where $P_W$ is raw world input, $M_{Ret}$ memory, $M_{Pro}$ predictive projection, and $\Delta t_{total} = \Delta t_{body} + \Delta t_{mind} + \Delta t_{art}$.

This formalism recognizes that experience and artistic creation are outcomes of delayed processing, integrating past and anticipated future.

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4. Bridging Physics and Cognition

Einstein’s GR is objective, external, modeling the universe independently of perception. Davidson’s framework is subjective, internal, modeling how brains stabilize chaotic sensory inputs across time.

• GR describes external causal delay (speed of light, curvature of spacetime).

• The Jelly Model describes internal cognitive delay, which mediates all perception and action.

Hopefully this essay insightfully argues: just as GR is correct within its domain, a Davidsonian Temporal Equation is necessary to model consciousness. It captures the “space within the two circles” — the internal dynamics of thought as it manifests in reality, memory, and art.

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5. Conclusion

Einstein and Davidson reveal complementary truths:

1. External universe: GR maps matter-energy to spacetime geometry.

2. Internal universe: Davidsonian Temporalism maps delay, memory, and prediction to conscious experience.

Revealing that in both cases, the present is unattainable. Physics and art converge: delay is the primordial medium, stabilizing experience, informing action, and inspiring creation. Einstein’s equation is correct by its rules; Davidson’s temporal equation is correct by its domain — together they suggest a richer, layered understanding of reality, bridging cosmos, consciousness, and artistic expression. And “Perhaps reality itself is a jelly — layered, delayed, and endlessly unfolding.”  .

“The Temporal Jelly Integration Model is a conceptual framework developed by the author.” “Hypothesis of Davidsonian Temporalism, Temporal Non-Presence, and the Jelly Metaphor: A Unified Framework”

https://2dogsartspaceakashi.blogspot.com/2025/12/hypothesis-of-davidsonian-temporalism.html

Two Dogs Art Space and the Science of Delay

Two Dogs Art Space and the Science of Delay

Peter Davidson - delay and scintillation 2026

Pastel pencil on pastel paper - F2

Abstract

This article positions the Two Dogs Art Space Axiom as a substantive contribution to global art theory. Developed through three decades of sustained studio practice and articulated publicly in the 2020 exhibition Delay (Akashi), the Axiom proposes that artistic figuration emerges from a non-temporal perceptual interval termed Delay. This interval structurally mediates sensation and action, generating the conditions under which artistic marks arise. By grounding artistic agency in perceptual structure rather than historical sequence, the Axiom challenges the chronological foundations of art history. The article further argues that the patronage philosophy of Robert and Janet Holmes à Court offers an external confirmation of this framework, insofar as their presentation of Aboriginal art as extraordinary contemporary practice implicitly recognizes the same structural interval operative in Indigenous mark-making.

1. Introduction: A Theory Emerging Outside Chronology

Global art discourse remains deeply invested in chronology—periodization, stylistic succession, and historical rupture. Artistic meaning is typically framed through national schools, cultural identity, or postcolonial critique. While these frameworks have yielded important insights, they presuppose that art originates within historical time.

The Two Dogs Art Space Axiom departs from this assumption. It proposes that art does not originate in historical sequence but in perceptual structure. Specifically, it asserts that all artistic marks arise from a structural interval—Delay—that intervenes between the apprehension of sensation and the execution of a mark. This interval is not temporal in the conventional sense, but constitutive of perception itself.

2. The Two Dogs Art Space Axiom

The Axiom may be stated as follows:

Artistic figuration emerges from a non-temporal perceptual interval—Delay—that structurally mediates sensation and action.

This proposition functions as an axiom rather than a historical theory or stylistic model because it is:

•    Irreducible: it cannot be explained by reference to iconography, culture, or chronology.

•     Presuppositional: it is operative in every act of mark-making, regardless of period or tradition.

• Non-derivable: it cannot be produced through historical analysis, as it precedes representation, meaning, and style.

Delay is therefore not a contingent feature of certain practices, but a structural condition of artistic agency itself.

3. Delay as a Non-Temporal Perceptual Interval

Delay is defined as the structural gap between the apprehension of a perceptual event and the emergence of an artistic mark. It is non-linear, non-quantitative, and non-chronometric. Delay is not a pause in time, nor a hesitation, but an interval in which sensation is reorganized, memory is activated, and perception becomes reconstructive.

Within this interval, perception is not passively received but actively reconstituted. The artistic mark does not represent sensation; it emerges from the reconfiguration of sensation within Delay. Because this interval is a universal feature of human perception, it operates across all artistic practices and it operates on a pulse not a clock.

4. A Transhistorical Framework for Global Art

Because Delay is structural rather than historical, it provides a transhistorical framework for understanding art. Paleolithic marks, classical figuration, Aboriginal painting, and contemporary abstraction are not linked by stylistic lineage but by their shared dependence on the same perceptual interval.

This framework bypasses Eurocentric periodization without denying cultural specificity. Traditions differ in cosmology, material, and meaning, but the structural condition under which marks arise remains constant.

5. The Holmes à Court Confirmation: Contemporary Agency Beyond Artifact

The validity of this transhistorical framework is externally confirmed by the landmark shift in the global reception of Aboriginal art, championed by Robert and Janet Holmes à Court. Their patronage and curatorial philosophy repositioned Aboriginal painting from “historical artifact” to extraordinary contemporary practice.

In a widely circulated interview, Janet Holmes à Court describes the work of artists such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye not as depictions of landscape, but as acts of “singing the country” onto the canvas. This framing emphasizes embodied attention and the act of making over representation. While Holmes à Court does not employ the language of Delay, her account implicitly locates artistic power in the interval where ancestral sensation is reconstructed as a contemporary mark. In this framework, the sensation resides in the specific application of the medium in relation to intent, while the implication of the idea—what the work ultimately signifies—remains the sovereign domain of the artist.

• Contemporary agency: the artist is not a vessel of tradition but an active perceptual agent.

• Structural practice over historical artifact: the work is alive, sovereign, and present.

• Plurality of outcomes: while the connection to land is ancient, each mark is contingent, modern, and irreducible.

This curatorial shift aligns precisely with the Axiom’s claim that artistic agency resides in perceptual structure rather than historical sequence.

6. Relation to Phenomenology: Beyond Lived Time

The Axiom resonates with phenomenological thought, particularly Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodied perception. However, it extends phenomenology by formalizing the perceptual interval itself. Delay is not merely described; it is operationalized as a working condition within studio practice.

In this sense, the Axiom transforms phenomenology from a philosophical description of experience into a studio-based epistemology, where the artist knowingly works within the interval that produces form.

7. Relation to Physics and Cognitive Science

In physics, structural intervals such as phase differences and thresholds condition the emergence of form without relying on linear chronology. Delay functions analogously—not as time, but as a structural condition for emergence.

Cognitive science similarly recognizes that perception is not immediate but constructed through sensory integration and memory. The Axiom reframes this understanding: Delay is the interval in which perception becomes creative rather than merely receptive. It is the point at which sensation is reconstructed as form.

8. The 2020 Exhibition Delay as Empirical Demonstration

The 2020 exhibition Delay at Two Dogs Art Space (Akashi) functioned as an empirical demonstration of the Axiom. Documentation of the exhibition is available here:

https://2dogsartspaceakashi.blogspot.com/2020/08/delay-influence-of-delay-within-artists.html

The works revealed:

• Recursive and layered mark-making

• The reconstruction of sensation through perceptual gaps

• Evidence that Delay operates as a working method rather than an abstraction

The exhibition showed that Delay is not a metaphor but a repeatable condition observable in practice.

9. Implications for Global Art Theory

The Two Dogs Art Space Axiom challenges several dominant assumptions:

• Art is structured by perceptual conditions, not historical time.

• Figuration is reconstructive rather than representational.

• Artificial intelligence, while capable of pattern generation, currently lacks access to the embodied, non-algorithmic perceptual interval that constitutes Delay.

This distinction is not technological but structural: Delay depends on lived perceptual integration rather than computational sequence.

10. Conclusion: A Global Theory of Artistic Agency

The Two Dogs Art Space Axiom offers a new foundation for global art theory—one capable of explaining why contemporary viewers can encounter profound relevance in ancient traditions. The answer lies not in shared history, but in a shared perceptual structure.

As Janet Holmes à Court observes, recognizing Aboriginal art as contemporary fosters cultural self-esteem and self-respect. By removing the “historical artifact” lens and attending instead to structural agency, we recognize that the sighting of a motif and the execution of a mark participate in a timeless, vital process.

Art, under this framework, is neither culturally bound nor historically constrained. It is the recurrent emergence of form from the irreducible interval of Delay.

All ideas presented here remain provisional and subject to ongoing refinement through practice.

Reference

Holmes à Court, J. One of Australia’s richest women’s interest in Aboriginal art. YouTube video.

The Sovereign Space: Defying “Voss in Paint”

 Untitled (Aging Mushrooms) 2026

Medium: Oil, wax, and acrylic on wooden board

Untitled (Aging Mushrooms) begins with a simple exchange between hand, material, and time. As the mushrooms soften and collapse, the brush meets resistance—viscosity, drag, and pressure shaping each mark on the wooden board. What remains are not representations of decay, but traces of an encounter: paint recording the moment where observation lags behind action, and form is held briefly before it yields.

Peter Davidson

The Sovereign Space: Defying “Voss in Paint”

Robert Hughes once dismissed certain Australian painters as producing “Voss in paint” — work shaped by inherited myth rather than lived experience. Davidsonian Temporalism rejects this framing. Authentic engagement does not arise from avoiding mythic landscapes; it arises from the delay you inhabit between perception and action. When you paint twilight over Trigg bushland, you are not reaching for a story. You are reaching for the interval where the light fades faster than your hand can follow.

At the centre of this thinking is the Sovereign Space: the irreducible territory between what you see and what you do. This is not an abstract philosophical gap. It is a bodily delay — the moment where the viscosity of paint, or the latency of an iPad, forces you into the present, a present already slipping into the past.

That delay unfolds in stages: perception, cognitive lag, artistic shaping, and finally action — the mark on the surface. Authenticity does not live in the motif but in the negotiation of this delay. The Sovereign Space is where that negotiation becomes visible.

The first ripple within this space is Kinetic Delay, where practice intersects with Barbara Bolt’s performativity and Caspar Fairhall’s emphasis on structure. On the iPad, your delay becomes entangled with the device’s own timing. The nanosecond lag between gesture and processor response produces a synthetic friction that must be navigated in real time.

Hughes’ critique collapses here. You cannot import a myth while you are busy keeping pace with a machine. The delay itself becomes the only story available.

Digital media introduce further layers of delay: the hand negotiating movement, the device asserting its own latency, and perceptual drift as delayed eye tracking continually reframes the image. Painting becomes a lived equation rather than a representation. In pencil, pastel, or coloured pencil — 15 × 20 cm — volume is stabilised through repeated adjustment rather than resolution. Fairhall’s “big volumes” operate as anchoring forms, keeping the work afloat amid overlapping temporal ripples.

The Physics of the Brush offers a response to Hughes. Authenticity is not achieved by avoiding myth but by surrendering to latency. Whether it is watercolour soaking into paper at 2 Dogs Art Space or the nanosecond delays of an iPad at Trigg, the work is shaped by the struggle between matter, memory, and action.

Delay is not a defect.

It is evidence of life.

 

Rethinking the “Nude Mona Lisa” Through the Lens of Delay

Peter Davidson

Did Leonardo da Vinci paint a nude Mona Lisa? I may have just solved this centuries-old mystery

A Response to Jonathan Jones (The Guardian)

Winter evening, Seto Inland Sea, Japan

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Introduction

Jonathan Jones’s exploration of the so‑called “Nude Mona Lisa”—the Houghton Nude, the Chantilly cartoon, and their relationship to Leonardo’s late practice—opens a door that extends far beyond mere attribution. Jones assembles the material clues: the left‑handed hatching of the Chantilly drawing, the studio‑level execution of the Houghton painting, and the circulation of ideas between Leonardo, his assistants, and Raphael.

What Jones frames as a "centuries-old mystery" of authorship, I understand as evidence of the Sovereign Space of Delay: the perceptual interval in which Leonardo’s conceptual energy, having reached saturation, becomes distributed across the shared pulse of the studio.

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1. The Scintillation vs. the Surface

Jones identifies the Chantilly cartoon as the "foundational clue," noting that technical analysis suggests it was "at least partly by Leonardo, done with the left hand." This is precisely where the perceptual event occurs. In my praxis, this drawing is the Prescience—the moment when Leonardo’s conceptual energy is at its highest voltage.

The left‑handed hatching is not merely technical evidence; it is the trace of what I call the Scintillation, the instant when perception outruns execution. Jones observes that the artist of the cartoon "replicates [the pose] perfectly," a feat easy only "if you actually were Leonardo." The subsequent oil versions—including the Houghton/Hermitage painting—are what I call Technical Residue. They mark the moment when Leonardo’s intensity enters the collective delay of the studio. His students did not merely imitate; they inhabited his pulse.

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2. The Non‑Chronological Link: A Compressed Field

Jones reminds us that the Mona Lisa accompanied Leonardo to Rome between 1513 and 1516. He notes that the artist "never gave it to Lisa’s husband," and that the work's small size "made it easy to transport on his restless sojourns." This fact collapses the conventional timeline. In the studio, the 1503 portrait and the 1514 nude reimagining are not separated by a decade but exist in a compressed perceptual field.

The Axiom: Scale and time are compressed in the Space of Delay.

The monumental hands of the nude figure—which Jones highlights as having "unmistakable allusions to the Mona Lisa"—are records of reconstruction. The nude is not "later" than the clothed version; it is parallel.

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3. The “Decadent” Pulse: A Shared Epistemology

Jones’s comparison with Raphael’s La Fornarina is vital. He suggests the nude Mona Lisa was "a grenade chucked into the Renaissance" that "radicalized the way artists painted bodies." This demonstrates that the Space of Delay was porous. Raphael, visiting Leonardo in the Belvedere, did not merely copy a motif; he caught the afterglow of the Scintillation. His painting becomes a secondary record of the perceptual interval—the space between the eye and the panel—that defined Roman production. The nude Mona Lisa belongs to a plural epistemology, where ideas circulate not as static images, but as pulses.

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Conclusion: The Attribution of the Lag

The essential question is not "Who held the brush?" but "Whose Delay is this?" Jones concludes that Leonardo "was so confident of that uniqueness he felt able to travesty it with a naked version." I would go further: the Nude Mona Lisa is the physical residue of Leonardo’s late‑period perception—a perceptual event completed through the hands of those who shared his rhythm. The Houghton painting is a delayed trace of the most significant perceptual mind in Western art.

In the Space of Delay, time dissolves. Whether it is a masterwork or a small nectarine held within this interval, the subject acquires monumental weight. The mundane becomes eternal through the mark of the lag.

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Inspired by Jonathan Jones, “Did Leonardo da Vinci paint a nude Mona Lisa?” (The Guardian, January 2026). Link to article

Driven in Delay II: The Two Dogs Art Space Axiom - Solo online Exhibition by Peter Davidson

 

Driven in Delay II: The Two Dogs Art Space Axiom

Delay, Perception, and the Monumental in the Mundane

Peter Davidson, PhD

Suspended aging Australian mandarin
Oil wax acrylic on wooden panel
18 cm h x 18 cm w

For nearly sixteen years, this studio has been the primary site of my research—a laboratory of slowness, perceptual attention, and accumulated experience. From this long-term engagement emerged the Two Dogs Art Space Axiom, a framework that redefines artistic practice through the concept of Delay. First articulated during my doctoral work at the Australian National University, the theory arose from a simple but transformative observation: the act of painting is never simultaneous with the act of seeing. Between the initial moment of perception t0​ and the painterly responseF t0​→t0​+D lies a temporal interval—a perceptual latency—that shapes every artistic mark.

This Space of Delay is not a metaphor but a working condition. It acknowledges that the artist’s agency unfolds through time, that perception is always reconstructed, and that the artwork becomes a record of this reconstruction. While the idea was sparked by reading about Monet’s “duration of painting,” its development came entirely from sustained manual practice. Delay is therefore not a technological concept but a phenomenological one: a recognition that human perception is inherently temporal and never instantaneous.

Aging fruit in the studio
Oil wax acrylic on wooden panel
20 cm x 20 cm

The 2020 Proof of Concept

The Axiom found its vital public expression in the 2020 exhibition Delay at Two Dogs Art Space in Akashi, Japan. Featuring works by Thomas Hoareau, John Cullinane, Michael Doherty, Kevin Robertson, Caspar Fairhall, and myself, the exhibition functioned as a proof of concept. Each artist, through their own methods, enacted the principles of Delay—demonstrating how perception, temporality, and agency intersect in the creation of art.

Significantly, this exhibition occurred just before the meteoric rise of generative AI. It stands as a pre-AI affirmation of the irreducible presence of the human hand and eye. The subtleties of timing and perceptual depth explored by these artists revealed a fundamental truth: the human experience of "the lag" cannot be automated or replicated mechanically.

  Part of exhibition

The Architecture of the Small: Scale vs. Focus

Parallel to this is my investigation into the monumental potential of ordinary objects, guided by the maxim:

“Scale is inversely proportional to focus.”

In small-format paintings—whether Chardin’s or my own—the reduced physical scale intensifies perceptual concentration. In my series Study of Aging Fruit, quotidian objects are depicted as they slowly transform within a timeless space. By shrinking the scale, the skin of a shriveling quince begins to take on the topographical gravity of a mountain range. The "monumental" is redefined: it is no longer about physical size, but the weight of accumulated attention compressed into a small frame.

Lineage and Conclusion

From Courbet’s apples to Cézanne’s endlessly reimagined fruit, the humble domestic motif has long served as a vessel for profound insight. My own praxis extends this lineage by proposing that the subjective quality of art arises from how each artist processes the inevitable lag of human perception

As Hokusai observed late in life, it takes decades of looking before one truly begins to see. The Two Dogs Art Space Axiom positions the studio as a site of innovation where prolonged engagement with perception yields new ways of understanding the lived experience of time. It affirms that art is not a mirror of a shared world, but a mediator between plural, irreducible realities.

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For further documentation on the Axiom and associated exhibitions, visit:

www.twodogsartspace.com

Link to the important first delay exhibition before AI

https://2dogsartspaceakashi.blogspot.com/2020/08/delay-influence-of-delay-within-artists.html

The exhibition 

Exhibition 2 Dogs Art Space Gallery

Plastic flower still life
Oil wax acrylic on wooden board
18 cm h x 14 cm

Plastic flower still life II
Oil wax acrylic on wooden board
18 cm h x 14 cm

Aging Pair of fruit in the studio
Oil wax acrylic on wooden panel
20 cm x 20 cm

Decaying apple painted in a space called delay - oil wax acrylic on w, on wooden panel

Aging apartment lemons II

Oil wax acrylic on wooden panel 

14 cm h x 18 cm w

Aging apartment lemons

Oil wax acrylic on wooden panel 

14 cm h x 18 cm w

A pair of decaying persimmons
Oil wax acrylic on wooden board
20 cm x 20 cm

Aging persimmon in a spatial part of a delayed journey between it’s beginning and end. 

Oil wax and acrylic on wooden panel, 20 cm x 20 cm

Three aging nectarines
Oil on wooden panel
14 cm h x 18 cm w

Two aging nectarines
Oil on wooden panel
14 cm h x 18 cm w