This resembles the cut-outs or arabesques of Matisse, but also the prayer flags or paper prayers drifting on the wind around the holy mountain. As Matissean marks it exists as a flat pattern floating on the surface of the canvas. As a depiction, however schematised, of the descent of a river, it works within the picture space. The strength of it is that it can and does have both functions.

On the trek, Elwes made colour notations and naturalistic sketches in watercolour, as well as taking photographs. Back in his North London studio he picked up the traces of his previous work and sought to incorporate his newly-garnered information. Again, external influences played their part in the generation of new images. Elwes had been looking at the great waterfalls in Hiroshige's prints, and the economic way the Japanese artist captures the sheer drop of water. (Interestingly, it appears often like a column.) Once again, simple shapes. Elwes had already begun to experiment with layered surfaces fractured like fretwork, the patina crisply broken-up into tiny windows, here and there revealing hidden depths excavated. He began to take this technique further.

 

He might commence by scribbling across the surface of the canvas, making marks almost like automatic writing. Various layers of underpainting and undermarking would then be covered up by a thin wash of paint. This again might be partly removed by running turps over the new surface. It's difficult to predict quite what will happen when another wash is flooded over the canvas, or even trickled on. The possibility of losing the surface altogether, clogging up the tooth of the canvas, simply by running too many washes over it, is an essential part of the process - it's the yeast of risk. In these new paintings, Elwes achieves thinner surfaces than before and yet more complex layering; despite the aleatory nature of this part of his practice, he has grown increasingly adept in its manipulation.

Chords and echoes sound through the work as a whole. Certain themes recur. In 1992, Elwes, an acute commentator and historian of his own work, wrote: 'In these paintings, two images have emerged, the meandering line and the divided surface. The lines are the paths of our own life, and the meandering course of all life, of branches, trees, roots and riverbeds. In their uninterrupted movement lies the search for markers, the signposts we need if we are to draw our own maps."