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.

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