These three sketchbook pages record an early sequence in the development of Human Presence Studies.
They are working documents rather than finished artworks. Their importance lies in the movement between them: beginning with an external influence, testing what it makes possible, recognising what does not belong, and reducing the composition until a more independent direction begins to emerge.
Project: Human Presence Studies - Concept Sketches 1–3
Archive number: PL-HPS-DRW-2026-0830-001
Date: 30 August 2026
Status: Working / Concept Development
Studio: Pieter Lategan | STUDIO
Location: Pretoria, South Africa
Studying Influence
These drawings arose partly from my study of Yayoi Kusama’s sustained development of repetition as a visual vocabulary.
The purpose was not to reproduce her visual language. It was to consider how an artist can return to a limited group of forms over time and allow them to carry increasingly complex ideas.
The three pages record what happened when repetition was introduced into my own developing study of the human face - and what became clearer when much of it was removed.
IMAGE 1 - PAGE 251
Concept: Concept Sketch 1
Archive reference: PL-HPS-DRW-2026-0830-001 - Page 251
The first concept begins with a simplified human face surrounded by repeated circles and dots.
At this stage, repetition operates as an open question. The page asks whether the relationship between the face and its surrounding field could begin to communicate presence, memory and silence.
The figure remains visible, but the surrounding marks have not yet found a necessary relationship with the person. The page records the starting influence and the first attempt to test it.
IMAGE 2 PAGE 53
Concept: Concept Sketch 2
Archive reference: PL-HPS-DRW-2026-0830-001 - Page 53
The second concept introduces a stronger gaze and a denser patterned field.
The human presence becomes more direct, but the repeated pattern also becomes more dominant. This creates a useful problem: the pattern begins to compete with the person rather than deepen the experience of the face.
That tension made something important visible. Repetition alone does not create meaning. When the surrounding pattern becomes too insistent, the human being risks becoming secondary to decoration.
This page therefore records both development and resistance. It shows what the borrowed visual device could do, but also where it began to move away from my own concerns.
IMAGE 3 - PAGE 54
Concept: Concept Sketch 3
Archive reference: PL-HPS-DRW-2026-0830-001 - Page 54
The third concept removes most of the repeated dots.
What remains is a human face, a large enclosing form and a quieter field of negative space. The composition becomes less decorative and more structural.
The face is no longer surrounded by an equal field of repeated marks. It is held in relation to containment, scale and emptiness. The enclosing form begins to operate almost architecturally: not as decoration around the person, but as a spatial condition pressing upon, protecting or containing the human presence.
Of the three pages, this becomes the strongest bridge toward my developing language of Human Presence Studies, Silent Monumentalism and Gravitas.
The important discovery was not the addition of another device. It was the recognition that something needed to be removed.
Toward an Independent Figurative Language
The future direction is not centred on repeated dots as a signature device. It is centred on human beings: faces, figures, hands, posture, weight, emotion, presence and memory.
Negative space, containment, scale and silence may provide the structure, but the human experience remains the subject.
The drawings will now lead into further studies of the figure and the ways in which a person can occupy, resist or be held within a larger visual field.
The technique is the foundation.
The human experience is the subject.
Meaning is the destination.
These pages do not claim that the visual language has been resolved. They preserve the moment at which one possible direction was tested, questioned and reduced - and another direction began to become visible.
Continue Exploring
Read Figure Study - Improving Line Quality and Rhythm with the FORCE Method for an earlier study of rhythm, movement, weight and the expressive human form.
Read Kailasa Temple - Subtractive Architecture and the Development of Silent Monumentalism for related research into removal, mass and negative space.
Read About Silent Monumentalism for the broader studio framework.
Pieter Lategan | 30 August 2026
Pretoria South Africa