Sonata 1

Rolph’s painting titled Sonata 1 emerged after listening to an early composition by John Cage. His piece, from 1933, was conceived while he was studying music and is his earliest known work. Cage apparently tried to get a Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra clarinetist to play the sonata, but the clarinetist refused on aesthetic grounds! The artist found a correspondence with his paintings as they are not bound by formal procedures. There are rhythmical fragments across the two paintings that are varied in approach and purpose, incorporating similar materials, symmetries and fragmented layering. Visualising the Cage work into this format took around six months to finish. Sonata 1 possesses a colourful energy, clarity and enquiry that opened up new visual territory within the work that has subsequently followed.