Woman and Two Girls

Discussing Lowry's figure paintings and drawings Michael Howard comments, 'In many of these drawings and paintings, no fixing mechanisms locate the figures in a safe distant space of the picture; instead, the whiteness of the paper, canvas or board operates as a metaphor for the gap between us and the subject, and on occasion Lowry gives the effect of his figures lurching into our space, as the co-ordinates of the depicted urban setting evaporate and they plunge towards us as though falling out of their frame' (see L.S. Lowry: A Visionary Artist, Salford, 2000, p. 174).